Most of the honest ones value a lot a refrainment from food, but this is not enough. The real fasting is spiritual: the refrainment by any means from not judging, from not slandering – such a bad thing and which is so easily done.
I dared say that the most of the people from hell are those who slander. The Church rate them as moral murderers, to annul a man whom Christ restored by His blood.
Thus the real spiritual fasting means the refrainment from slandering and praying and becoming aware of how far you are of salvation and see yourself in the moment of Judgment or of your death. The greatest philosophy is the thought at death. It is a great mistake to think you will live only until death: life begins right from then on.
Fasting has a great value if it is kept spiritually with greater care. Let us know Christian love because love is a criterium of judgment. Nothing can be done without love. We have the duty to love our brothers. How much we love the others is the measure of how much we love God.
You are wrong if you think that you love God and you dislike so many people. The great joy of forgiveness was not tasted.
So fasting means to train yourself all the time to be ready in the greatest moment of your life, on the greatest day of your life – the day of death. The Church gave us this possibility to train ourselves in not hating and in loving.
I said : a state of continous presence, not so much of ascetic strife, not a state of not eating for days or weeks. You should eat moderately but with refrainment having in mind the main aim: life for salvation.
Archimandrite Arsenie Papacioc
Source: http://www.urcusspreinviere.ro
