On Fasting

-St. Basil the Great

When generals draw up their armies, they customarily deliver exhortatory speeches before the battle; and such exhortation has so great a power that many soldiers thereby come to despise even death itself. In the same way, those who train youths for athletic contests, when they lead them forth into the public arena, do all they can to persuade them that they endure toil for the sake of winning crowns; wherefore many, longing to gain victory, have thought little of their own bodies.

So too must I, who lead forth Christ’s soldiers to war against invisible foes and prepare ascetics of piety through abstinence for the crowns of righteousness, deliver an exhortatory word.

The angels inscribe the names of those who fast at every church. Take care, therefore, that for the sake of a brief sweetness of food you do not fall out of the angels’ register and make yourself a deserter from the army before Him who enlisted it. It is a lesser evil to be convicted of having thrown away one’s shield on the battlefield and fled, than to cast away the great shield of fasting.

Are you rich? Do not insult fasting by banishing it from your table and driving it dishonored from your house, as though it were conquered by luxury, lest it accuse you before Him who ordained the fasts, and you be condemned to a far severer fast—either bodily sickness or some other grievous affliction.

The poor man must not revile fasting on the ground that it has long been his companion and was reared together with him. For women, fasting is as natural as breathing. Let youths, like tender branches, be watered by the water of fasting. For the old, the labor is made lighter by their long union with fasting; for a toil that has been practiced through long habit is not so burdensome to those accustomed to it.

To travelers, fasting is a light companion on the journey; for just as luxury forces them to carry a heavy load (all the things that serve gluttony), so fasting makes them swift and unencumbered. Among earthly soldiers, reward increases according to labor; but among spiritual warriors, the one who takes less food is counted worthy of the greater honor.

Therefore it is unseemly to rejoice in the health of the soul yet grieve over a change of diet, showing yourself more concerned for the pleasure of the belly than for the soul. Satiety brings pleasure to the belly, but fasting brings profit to the soul.

Do not imitate Eve’s disobedience; do not again accept the serpent as your counselor, who offers food that is delightful only to the flesh. Do not plead weakness and bodily frailty, for you offer your excuses not to me but to Him who knows all things. Tell me: you cannot fast, yet you can always gorge yourself and overload your body with a multitude of dishes? I know well that physicians prescribe for the sick not a variety of foods but abstinence and doing without food altogether. How then can you endure gluttony yet plead that fasting is unbearable for you? What is easier for the belly—to pass the night after moderate eating, or to lie down weighed down by a superabundance of food? Surely you will not say that sailors can more easily save a ship heavily laden with cargo than one moderately loaded and light? A vessel excessively burdened is sunk even by a slight wave, whereas when its weight is moderate, it rides easily above the billows.

I think I have no greater difficulty in persuading you to accept fasting than in guarding lest someone today fall into the vice of drunkenness. Many keep the fast either from habit or from mutual shame, but beware of drunkenness, which wine-lovers preserve as though it were a paternal inheritance. Just as those setting out on a long journey, so too certain foolish people get drunk in the days immediately before the holy fast.

What are you doing, O man? No one, on the very eve of his lawful marriage to an honorable bride, brings harlots and concubines into his house; for the lawful wife will not endure union with one who is defiled. So too, when you are about to receive fasting, do not first bring in drunkenness—those shameful harlots, mothers of shamelessness, frenzied and inclined to every kind of impurity. The Lord receives the fasting man into His holy enclosure, but the drunkard, being unclean and far from holiness, He does not admit to Himself. If tomorrow you come breathing out wine—wine already turned foul—shall I count your drunkenness as fasting? I do not say that you drank impure wine; I say that you yourself have become impure through wine. Judge for yourself: among which shall I place you—among the drunkards or among those who fast? Yesterday’s drunkenness claims you for its own, while today’s abstinence marks you as fasting. You are therefore in doubt, like a captive of drunkenness whom it will not release. And rightly so, for the clear proofs of your slavery are proclaimed—the stench of wine that lingers in you as though in a vessel.

What teacher’s arrival so quickly calms the rowdiness of boys as the appearance of fasting suddenly puts an end to disorder throughout an entire city? Who has ever become insolent because of fasting? What shameful gathering has ever arisen from fasting? Lewd songs and frenzied dances are suddenly driven from the city, pursued by fasting as by some dread judge. If all men took fasting as their counselor in life, nothing would prevent the longed-for peace from spreading throughout the whole world; nations would not rise against nations, nor armies clash with one another. In a word, deserts would have no robbers, cities no slanderers, seas no pirates, and our life itself would not be filled with so many calamities and sighs. Had fasting dwelt among us, it would truly have taught all people not only abstinence from food but also withdrawal from greed, extortion, and every kind of wickedness.

Fasting nursed the great Samson; and as long as he remained with it, thousands of enemies fell, city gates were carried off upon his shoulders, and lions could not withstand the strength of his hands. But when he was ensnared by drunkenness and fornication, he became a captive of his enemies, lost his eyes, and was made a plaything for foreign children.

Elijah, by fasting, shut heaven for three years and six months. Seeing that great evil arises from satiety, he brought famine and compelled an unwilling people to fast, thereby cutting off their sin that had spread so far; he used fasting like a fire or a knife to turn away the growing evil. For that righteous man, in order to soften the unyielding hearts of a stiff-necked people, chose to condemn himself together with them to suffering. “As the Lord lives,” he said, “there shall be no rain upon the earth except by the word of my mouth.” Thus strengthened by fasting even against death itself, he restored the widow’s son to her.

Yet however little benefit there is in a virtue proclaimed only in words, so too fasting that is performed merely for show before men brings no fruit. For what is done only for appearance profits nothing in the age to come but is merely praised by men.

What was the life of Elisha like? How was he deemed worthy of the Shunammite’s hospitality? How did he feed the prophets? Did he not satisfy the need of hospitality with wild herbs and a little flour? And when gourds had been gathered and those who ate of them were about to perish, would they not have died had the poison not been dispelled by the prayer of the fasting man? In short, of all the saints you will find that every one of them was guided through fasting to a life pleasing to God.

Asbestos—so called because of its peculiar nature—has this property: though cast into fire, it does not burn. When thrown into the flames it seems to glow red-hot and turns into what looks like burning coal, yet when taken out it is cleaner, as though washed with water. Such were the bodies of those three youths in Babylon who, through fasting, had acquired the property of asbestos. For sitting in the midst of the raging furnace, as though they were naturally made of gold, they so overcame the fierceness of the fire that they seemed harder even than gold itself. The flame did not consume them but kept them unharmed—though nothing can withstand that fire which, fed with naphtha, pitch, and brushwood, was inflamed to such a degree that it rose forty-nine cubits high, burning everything around it and destroying many of the Chaldeans. Yet the youths who entered that dread furnace with fasting trod it underfoot; they breathed a cool and dewy air amid flames so fierce that not even their hair was touched—because they had been nurtured by fasting.

Daniel, the man of desires, after three weeks without tasting bread or drinking water, went down into the lions’ den and taught the lions themselves to fast. The beasts could not open their jaws against him, as though he were made of stone or bronze or some other substance harder still. Fasting, as though it were a kind of soldering of iron, had made that man’s body impenetrable and inaccessible to lions.

Moses would never have dared to approach the mountain when he saw its summit smoking, nor to enter the dark cloud, had he not been armed with fasting. By fasting he received the Law written with the finger of God upon the tablets; on the height he obtained the giving of the Law through fasting; but below, gluttony led the people to idolatry. The forty days’ communion with God of the fasting and praying servant were rendered fruitless by a single act of drunkenness. Those tablets that bore the writing of God’s own finger—tablets that fasting had obtained—drunkenness shattered. For, in the prophet’s judgment, a drunken people was not worthy to receive the Law from God.

What disgraced Esau and made him a servant to his brother? Was it not food, for which he sold his birthright?

By a forty-day fast Elijah purified his soul and in the cave of Horeb was counted worthy to behold the Lord, as far as it is possible for a man to see Him.

Whose bones fell scattered in the wilderness? Was it not those who lusted after meat? So long as they were content with manna and the water flowing from the rock, they conquered the Egyptians, passed through the sea, and “there was not one feeble person among their tribes” (Ps 105:37). But when they remembered the flesh-pots of Egypt and longed in their hearts to return thither, they were not deemed worthy to see the promised land.

Neither would that wise Daniel have seen visions had he not enlightened his soul by fasting. For from rich foods there rise, as it were, smoky vapors that darken the light of the Holy Spirit which illumines the mind, just as a thick cloud obscures the sun. Light sleep—and sleep from which one can easily awake—comes naturally after moderate eating; such sleep is also quickly broken by care and concern for important matters. But he who is held fast by deep sleep, when all his limbs are relaxed and empty dreams can easily enter, is each day in a kind of death.

For Moses to receive the Law a second time, a second fast was required. Had the Ninevites not fasted together even with their beasts of burden, they would not have escaped the destruction foretold them. Without doubt, fasting is a great blessing to mankind, for whose sake God even changed His decree. Destruction had been proclaimed against Nineveh after three days; but the conversion of the Ninevites overcame that sentence. The threat of destruction was set aside because of their turning to God. Those merciful sinners of Nineveh, when they heard Jonah’s voice announcing their doom, by the help of fasting escaped the threatened punishment and by confession and prayer obtained salvation.

Consider this also: has anyone ever diminished the wealth of his house because of fasting? Count now everything within your house, and count again afterward—nothing of your substance will be lost through fasting. With fasting no animal laments its death; nowhere is blood shed; nowhere are sentences of death pronounced by the insatiable belly upon living creatures. The cooks’ knives rest; the table is content with things that grow of themselves. And to reasonable abstainers who are asked with disdain, “Why do we not eat everything?” we must answer: “We abhor even the uncleanness of our own bodies.” As for dignity, we use herbs and vegetables in place of flesh; as for usefulness, just as we distinguish in vegetables between the wholesome and the harmful, so in meats we separate the healthful from the unhealthful. Henbane is a garden herb, and vulture’s flesh is flesh; yet no one in his right mind would eat henbane or dog’s flesh except under extreme necessity—yet he who eats it does not sin.

Give your cook a rest; let the table-preparer repose; stay the hand of the cup-bearer. Let him who is ever busy about varieties of food cease, if only for a short time. Let the house itself rest from continual clamor, smoke, fumes, and the running to and fro of those who serve your belly as though it were a tyrannical master—for even tax-collectors sometimes grant their subjects a little relief. Let the belly, which is ever demanding and never satisfied—for what it received today it has forgotten tomorrow—grant peace to our lips and enter with us into a five-day truce. When it is full, it philosophizes; but when it is emptied, it remembers none of its own resolutions.

Yet just as in clothing we should use only what is necessary, so in food let bread satisfy hunger and water quench thirst; and preparations made from seeds, taken for needful sustenance, can strengthen the body. When we take food, we must show no ravenous gluttony but always decency and moderation, and we must abstain from delicacies.

But what shall I do now? When I look at the great number of words I have already spoken, it seems to me that I have gone beyond bounds; yet when on the other hand I turn my gaze to the manifold wisdom displayed in creation, it seems I have scarcely begun. Nevertheless, to detain you longer is no small benefit. For what have you to do from now until evening? No banqueters compel you, no feasts await you. Therefore, if you are willing, let us use the fast of the body for the delight of our souls. Many times you have served the pleasure of the flesh; now abide in the service of the soul. “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps 36/37:4).

What profit is it to fast with the body while the soul is full of countless evils? And he who does no evil yet lives in idleness—what vain thing will such a man not say, or what unseemly thing will he not hear? For idleness without the fear of God is a teacher of vice to those who know not how to use their time.

Thus I trust that some benefit will be found even in what I have said; and if there is none, at least this will be your gain—that being occupied with these things you do not commit sin. To keep you here longer, therefore, is the same as to keep you longer from evil and to guide you toward the kingdom of heaven.

May you all attain that kingdom, through Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom belong glory, honor, and worship, together with His Father who is without beginning and the all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.