On Elijah and Fasting 1–40

A divine oracle resounded to the fathers, that when they went out to war they should sound the trumpet, at whose sound the Lord would remember his people, so as to grant the help asked, recognizing the more what moves his mercy; and that on the days of their gladness, at their new moons, they should sing together with the sound of trumpets. Hence David too says: 'Sound the trumpet at the beginning of the month, on the crowded day of your feast.' The day of our feast, then, will come, and it is already drawing near. Let us sound the trumpet as those going forth to battle; let us sound the trumpet to announce the day of the feast. At once both a contest threatens us and victory is promised us. Our victory is the cross of Christ; our trophy is the Pasch of the Lord Jesus. But he fought first, in order to conquer, not because he himself needed the contest, but to prescribe for us first the pattern of fighting and afterward to give the grace of triumph. Our contest is the fast. Indeed the Savior fasted, and so the tempter came to him. And first he aimed the dart of gluttony, saying: 'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' He held out food like the bait of a snare, so as to snare bodily appetite; the Lord preferred the fast, to undo the snares and the chains of the tempter. Indeed you have it written thus: 'Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.' By that snare Adam had been strangled; by this answer to the devil's question every man has been set free.

Great is the power of fasting; indeed it is so fine a warfare that it delighted even Christ to fast, so strong that it raised men to heaven. And to use human rather than divine examples: a voice sent from Elijah's fasting mouth shut heaven against the sacrilegious people of the Jews. For when King Ahab had set up an altar to an idol, at the prophet's word the dew of rain did not fall on the earth for three years and six months. A fitting punishment, to restrain intemperance suitably, that heaven should be shut to the ungodly who had polluted earthly things. Fitting too that, to the condemnation of the sacrilegious king, the prophet should be sent to the widow in Zarephath of Sidon, who, because she preferred devotion to food, deserved alone not to feel the hardship of the general drought. So the jar of meal did not fail, when the streams of the brook failed.

Why should I weave in the rest of his deeds? Fasting, he raised the widow's son from the dead; fasting, he brought down rain by his word; fasting, he brought down fire from heaven; fasting, he was snatched up to heaven in a chariot; and by a fast of forty days he gained the divine presence. Indeed he deserved more when he fasted more. With fasting mouth he stopped the streams of the Jordan and crossed the bed of the overflowing river, suddenly dried, with dusty step. Rightly the divine sentence judged him worthy of heaven, so that he was snatched up with his very body, since he lived a heavenly life in the body and showed on earth the practice of the life above.

For what is fasting but a heavenly substance and image? Fasting is the refreshment of the soul, the food of the mind; fasting is the life of angels, the death of guilt, the destruction of offenses, the remedy of salvation, the root of grace, the foundation of chastity. By this step one comes more quickly to God; by this step Elijah ascended before he did by the chariot; this inheritance of sober abstinence he left to his disciple as he went to heaven; in this virtue and spirit of Elijah came John. Indeed he too gave himself to fasts in the desert, and his food was locusts and wild honey. And therefore he who by continence had surpassed the capacity of human life was thought not a man but an angel. Of him we read: 'Even more than a prophet.' This is he of whom it is written: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way before you.' Who by human power could have mounted fiery horses and fiery chariots and steered chariots of the air, but one who had changed the nature of the human body by the power of incorruptible fasting?

But we have already set out a great deal about Elijah's deeds in frequent discussion in various books, and I think we must take care not to return to the same things, especially since he is praised in his own work. Let us imitate him, then, and seek that food by whose strength we may advance day and night to the knowledge of things above. For not all food is material, nor all nourishment bodily: there is a food of the mind, as we have said, on which souls feast, of which the Lord says: 'My food is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.' This is the food of angels, that they serve the divine command. They have no concern with tables, no use of banquets, no stored-up dishes, no drinking of wine or strong drink, no distension of the body, no trouble of the belly.

So, lest anyone think fasting earthly or recent, the first use of the world began with fasting, when bright light shone forth. The second day was for fasting, when the firmament of heaven was made. On the third day the earth sprouted fodder, nature offered its service; yet the heavenly discipline kept the fast. On the fourth day the lights of sun and moon were made: and still a fast. On the fifth the waters brought forth creeping things of living souls and birds over the earth along the firmament of heaven, and God saw that they were good. And God blessed them, saying: 'Increase and multiply and fill the waters that are in the sea, and let the birds multiply on the earth': and still a fast. Indeed it is written that he blessed them and said: 'Increase'; he did not say: 'Eat and consume.' On the sixth day the beasts were created, and with the beasts arose the power of eating and the use of foods. Where food began, there an end was made of the world; there it began not to know its increase; there the divine works concerning it began to rest. By this sign it was declared that the world would be diminished by foods, by which it ceased to be increased. No one knew offense, no one feared punishment, no one knew death.

The Lord planted paradise for the grace of the blessed, placed man there to work and guard it, and, so that we may know that fasting is not recent, he first established there a law about fasting; for he knew that guilt would enter through food. The first punishment concerned transgression of the fast, the command of God saying: 'Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; on the day you eat of it you shall die the death.' Until then no one knew how to transgress, so much so that she who first transgressed the prohibition of abstinence had not yet been born. The law is from the Lord God, the transgression of the law from the devil; guilt through food, hiding after food; the knowledge of weakness in food, the strength of firmness in fasting. Indeed, as long as they abstained from what was forbidden, they did not know they were naked; after they ate of the forbidden tree, they knew they had been stripped. Rightly, then, the woman, when she recognized the author of the guilt, being asked, said: 'The serpent persuaded me, and I ate.' The serpent urges gluttony, the Lord decrees fasting. Indeed he himself says: 'Fast and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.' So gluttony drove the ruler out of paradise, abstinence called the wanderer back to paradise.

'And God said: Behold, Adam has become like one of us.' God says this surely in mockery, not approval; that is: Did you think you would be like us? Because you wanted to be what you were not, you ceased to be what you were. So while you aspire to be above yourself, you have begun to be beneath yourself. Indeed he first clothed him with a tunic of skin, and then said: 'Behold Adam,' as if to say: Behold your clothing, behold your fitting garment; thus clothed you are seemly. Those who aspire to divine things are held worthy of such an adornment. Behold where your guilt has brought you; behold, now in this tunic of skin, like one of us, you have opened your eyes. Look around carefully: you see yourself naked, who thought yourself clothed.

Gluttony, then, makes us naked; fasts cover even those who have been stripped. Hence the Lord says: 'I covered my soul with fasting.' A good covering, which covers the soul too, so that it is not caught by the tempter, not stripped by the tempter. A good veil, which covers guilt: abstinence covers, grace covers; for 'blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.' Grace covers when it forgives and abolishes every error; abstinence covers when it overshadows vice and hides it with a sorrowful disposition and diminishes it by repentance. For fasting and almsgiving free from sin. Adam was covered with the veil of the virtues before he transgressed. But as one stripped by transgression, he saw that he was naked, because he had lost the garment he had. 'For in the days of your fasts,' it says, 'your morning light will rise for you, and your health will rise quickly, and righteousness will go before you, and the majesty of the Lord will surround you.' Light is a good garment. For it is written: 'Surrounded with light as with a garment.' A good garment, when the Lord surrounds and covers those who fast.

Noah was stripped when he became drunk; the devotion of his sons covered him. But he was stripped through ignorance, not intemperance; for wine was still unknown. At the beginning of the human race drunkenness was unknown. He himself first planted a vineyard: he gave it its nature, he did not know its power. So the wine did not spare even its own author. What wonder if, when the Lord himself praised his creatures, he too admired it? So when the grace of the gift he had found delighted him, the stronger creature tempted the old man's unaccustomed limbs; the new drink disturbed him. 'They slumbered,' it says, 'who mounted horses.' He mounted the pleasures of the body: and the just man fell asleep. But his drunkenness persuades us to sobriety. For Noah was drunk once; but when he recognized the evil of drunkenness, he tempered his discovery for a remedy and did not pour it out for vice. Hence the apostle says: 'Use a little wine because of your frequent illnesses.'

Before wine was discovered, freedom remained unshaken for all; no one knew how to demand the services of slavery from a sharer of his own nature. There would be no slavery today if there had been no drunkenness. Envy at a brother's preference had indeed crept in, yet reverence for a father's dignity still remained. Piety was wounded when drunkenness was laughed at. So wine harms not only those whom it tempts, but even more those before whose eyes the drunken limbs of the drunk are bared. Hence irreverent laughter is born, hence lust is inflamed, so that wine disturbs with much greater drunkenness those whose eyes and minds it has made drunk than those whose limbs it has laid low.

We read also that Lot's daughters made their father drunk on that mountain to which they had fled in fear of the fire of Sodom, and where they lived in a cave. Age, sex, solitude, and a place fitter for the lairs of wild beasts than for human dwellings agreed and conspired with drunkenness. So drunkenness was the origin of incest, the offspring worse than its very bad mother.

But Abraham did not serve wine at his banquet: he sacrificed a calf and offered butter and milk too to his angelic guests — he recognized the Lord of heaven, the author of the world — for he could not offer wine. And rightly the material of sin was absent there, where there was the remission of sins.

Indeed John, who announced him, neither ate bread nor drank wine; for one who announces Christ ought to keep himself apart from every incitement of the vices. Drunkenness, then, overcame holy Noah and also Lot, Abraham's nephew; the one of whom, while he fasted, survived the flood, the other the fire.

We know too that Moses sweetened the bitterness of the waters for the thirsting people, not wine. He for whom the rock spewed water could also not have lacked an abundance of wine. Indeed God said: 'You shall strike the rock, and water will come out, and the people will drink'; he did not say: 'Wine will come out for the people.' For it was dangerous to supply wine, which even the stronger could scarcely bear. Indeed Moses gave a law about fasting; he gave none about wine.

Nor did the loud voices, the lightnings and the stormy cloud, or smoking Sinai terrify him while he fasted. Nor would he have entered the cloud and heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire without danger to his life, had he not been fortified with the arms of fasting. For he fasted forty days on the mountain when he received the law from the Lord our God. And on the heights of the mountain the law was being given to Moses as he fasted; below, the sacrilegious transgression of the people, who were eating, was being kindled by the luxury of the feasters. Moved by that spectacle, Moses broke the tablets, judging it unfitting that the law should be given to a drunken people.

So drunkenness caused the tablets of the law, which abstinence received, to be broken. What else shall I say? Did not abstinence from wine make fruitful the barrenness of Samson's mother and make her a mother from barren? For according to the Lord's command she did not drink wine. Did not the Lord hear Hannah when she did not eat, and fasts loosen her infertility? The two <who> were born of them, one the strongest, the other the most observant, showed themselves worthy to seem long nourished in the bosom of fasting and poured forth, as it were, from a womb of abstinence. So the same Samson, who was begotten through his mother's sobriety, was avenged through the drunkenness of the foreigners who mocked him.

The prophet Elisha, who had learned frugality from his master, when he was feeding the sons of the prophets, loaded the tables with lumps of a wild vine and fulfilled the duty of hospitable kindness with unfit wild plants. When they were offended by their bitterness and could not eat, he tempered all that bitterness by sprinkling a little flour, emptying the poison of its strength by the gift of prophetic abstinence.

There is a certain substance in nature, which they call asbestos (amiantus), not easily consumed by any fire, which, when placed on the hearth, glows with fire, but when at once taken out of the flame shines clean as if washed with water. Such were the bodies of the Hebrew youths, which, transformed by fasting into the nature of asbestos, borrowed the heat of the fire not to their loss but to their grace. Indeed, when the fires of the furnace raged, so that the flame poured out more than forty cubits all around, consuming very many of the Chaldeans whom it found, who were supplying fuel to the fires with naphtha, pitch, tow, and brushwood, when they entered with fasting, the heat of the flames was dispersed, and in the midst of the furnace they at once began to be moistened with the breath of a cooling dew, so that not one hair of their head was burned, because fasts had nourished that hair too.

Daniel, the man of desires, by a fast of three weeks taught even the lions to fast. Cast into the den, his limbs hardened to the firmness of adamant by the solidity of abstinence, he lay open to no wound. Fasts had so bound him together that there could be no place for the bites of the beasts in his body. The lions kept their mouths shut, which the holiness of prophetic abstinence restrained, so that the beasts could not open them, bound by certain bonds of merit.

So fasting extinguished the power of fire, fasting stopped the mouths of lions, fasting made the waters of the sea solid, fasting dissolved the rock into springs of water; by the power of fasting the waves stiffened and the rock flowed, changed against their own nature.

And why should I use ancient examples, when fasting abounds also in the gifts of present graces? Who has ever damaged his house by fasting, who has diminished his means? To whom is luxury not suspect, to whom is abstinence not venerable? Whose bed has frugality assailed, whose modesty has drunkenness not wounded? Fasting is the teacher of continence, the discipline of modesty, humility of mind, chastisement of the flesh, the pattern of sobriety, the rule of virtue, the purification of the soul, the funding of mercy, the training of gentleness, the allurement of love, the grace of old age, the guard of youth; fasting is the relief of weakness, the nourishment of health. No one has fallen into indigestion by fasting, no one has felt a stroke of the blood through continence; rather, no one has not repressed and driven it back. It is a good provision for the journey, good for the whole of life, good at sea: it calms shipwrecks, it preserves food.

They say fasting is burdensome: let them answer who has collapsed from fasting. Many have breathed out their soul at dinner, very many while vomiting up a feast. What animal, finally, has lamented that fasting was the cause of its death? Through food the snare is not avoided; the hook lies hidden in food; food leads into the pit, food leads into the nets, food binds even birds with birdlime, food brings the fliers down to death. What dangers are there not because of the belly? Dumb animals know no crime and in this alone are punished as for a crime. Fasting is sobriety of mind. By it the senses are vigorous; in it judgments are weighed, at the banquet cups. Fasting guards discipline; poverty follows luxury. Luxury is the mother of famine, according to the prophetic saying. Fasting loves quiet, luxury restlessness; fasting sows leisure, luxury business.

Let the cooks' and floggers' knife take a holiday at some time. Let the caterer rest, who knocks at others' doors before daylight and wakes the sleepers as though some war were threatening. You see him troubled, you notice him panting. You ask the cause of the disturbance. 'My master is feasting,' he says; he is looking for where better wine is sold, where a tougher sow's womb is prepared, where a softer liver, where a fatter pheasant, where a fresher fish. He runs about here and there, and when he has found them, he hurries with the greatest speed, disturbs his sleepy master, auctions the prices. If the price of the fish has bothered him, he asserts that better ones are found nowhere, indeed that there are none. 'Yesterday a storm,' he says, 'today a tempest; I could hardly catch this one hiding. Many are crowding the market. If you give it back, another will give more, and what will you serve at dinner? This wine is from that vintage, these oysters gathered from that lake.' Such bidding takes place over each item; a kind of auction is held between the caterer and the feeder. Troubled, he knocks down his estate, and still asks for those by whom the rights over his goods are diminished.

There is a rush to the kitchen; there is a huge din, an uproar. The whole household is in commotion; all curse because no rest is given them. Give the cook rest at last; stay the cupbearer's right hand: it is stiff with the extreme frost. He works his hands in cold water; marbles are washed for others. They clean the floors soaked with wine and covered with fish bones. How many are wounded as they walk! At the very banquet there is the shouting of the feasters and the groaning of those being beaten. If something displeased your friends, they laugh; you are indignant. Let the house be silent for once from the many disturbances of those running here and there, from the sound of slaughtered animals; let it be free of smoke and the stench of half-singed things. You would think it not a kitchen but a butchery, a battle being waged, not a dinner being prepared: so everything swims in blood.

Gluttony is a bad mistress to serve, which always demands and is never filled. For what is more insatiable than the belly? Today it receives, tomorrow it demands. When it has been filled, continence is discussed; when it has digested, virtues are bidden farewell, and it seeks luxury. Among the cups philosophy is preached; among the philosophers wines are praised. 'Sleeplessness,' it says, 'and cholera and torture for the insatiable man.' He eats, and shortly after he repents of it.

His intemperance did not delight that rich man for long, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted splendidly every day, at whose gate lay that beggar Lazarus, full of sores, longing to be filled with what fell from the rich man's table. Shortly after, when he had died, placed in hell, he began to beg that the poor man might dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue, which was burning in the fire. Where are those plenties, where those drinking bouts? He thirsts who was drunk; he abounds who begged. At the very banquet, while they drink, they thirst, and when they are drunk, they drink more. As if a whirlpool were opened, wine is no longer drunk but poured in; the cup is not sipped but emptied.

'Thorns,' it says, 'grow in the hand of the drunkard,' because he wounds himself with his own hands, he himself casts sores into his breast. With these thorns he tears the garment of faith which he received and will not be able to keep his treasure; for 'every drunkard and fornicator will be in want and will clothe himself in the torn garments of folly.' And therefore the powerful are forbidden to drink wine, lest when they have drunk they forget wisdom.

Indeed the powerful men who were eager to hand themselves over to Holofernes, commander of the army of the king of the Assyrians, drank wine to drunkenness; but the woman Judith did not drink, fasting all the days of her widowhood except the solemnities of the feast days. Armed with these arms she went out and outwitted the whole army of the Assyrians. By the vigor of sober counsel she took off the head of Holofernes, kept her chastity, and won back victory. For she, girded with fasting, went before them in the camp of the enemy, while he lay buried in wine, so that he could not feel the stroke of the wound. So the fasting of one woman laid low countless armies of drunkards. Esther too, made

more beautiful by fasting — for the Lord increased the grace of a sober mind — freed her whole race, that is, the whole people of the Jews, from the bitterness of persecution, so that she made the king subject to herself, not inflamed with the heat of lust but turned by heavenly mercy, so that punishment was turned back upon the ungodly man and honor restored to the sacred altars. So she who fasted three days together and washed her body with water pleased more and won vengeance. But Haman, while he boasted himself at the royal banquet, paid the penalty of his drunkenness among the very wines.

Fasting, then, is a sacrifice of reconciliation, an increase of virtue, which has made even women stronger by an increase of grace. Fasting knows no moneylender, knows no principal of a loan; the table of those who fast does not smell of interest; a father's interest of one percent a month does not strangle the son of a continent man; the mortgaged rights of a sober man who has died do not harass his widow; the hall of one who fasts, sold off for debt, does not shut out the heir.

Fasting gives grace even to banquets. Dishes become sweeter after hunger which by constant use are tiresome and grow cheap by daily continuance. Fasting is the seasoning of food: the keener the appetite, the more pleasant the food. Thirst commends the cup. He who passes whatever he has drunk on to satiety and does not suspend it at his nose for judgment does not know how to seek out the charms of wine. By use even precious things degenerate; but what is hard to possess is pleasant to enjoy. The sun itself is more welcome after the night, light itself more splendid after darkness, sleep sweeter after wakefulness, health itself more pleasant after the trials of sickness. From the very founder of the world we have learned that grace is often heaped up by alternations. Hunger, then, is the patron even of the banquet, and the table becomes more welcome through fasts.

The mystical table too is gained by fasting, that table of which David says: 'You have prepared a table before me against those who afflict me.' It is acquired at the price of hunger, and that inebriating cup of the sobriety of the heavenly sacraments is sought by thirst. For the Lord said: 'You who thirst, go to the water, and whoever has no silver, go and buy and drink and eat.' And elsewhere he says: 'Behold, those who serve me will eat, but you will be hungry; behold, those who serve me will drink, but you will thirst.' Who are 'you' but those who drank before? Of them he said above: 'You prepared a table for demons and filled a cup for fortune.' If, then, holy fasts lead us to that venerable table, if by this hunger we purchase what is eternal, why do we doubt about what is in human use, that fasting makes this too more pleasant for us?

Not every hunger, however, makes an acceptable fast, but the hunger that is undertaken in the fear of God. Consider: in Lent one fasts on all days except the sabbath and the Lord's day. The Lord's Pasch brings this fast to a close. Now comes the day of resurrection; the elect are baptized, they come to the altar, they receive the sacrament. Thirsting, they drink with all their veins. Rightly each, refreshed with spiritual food and spiritual drink, says: 'You have prepared a table before me, and how glorious is your inebriating cup!' Not hunger alone, however, is sought, but the full discipline of fasting. Indeed it is said to others: 'For in the days of your fasts you find your own wills and goad all who are subject to you. Do you fast for lawsuits and quarrels and strike with fists? Why do I want such a fast, so that your voice is heard in shouting? This is not the fast I have chosen, nor the day for a man to humble his soul; not if you bend your neck like a hoop and spread ashes and sackcloth beneath you — not even so will you call it an acceptable fast. Not such a fast have I chosen, says the Lord.' We have heard which fast is rejected; now let us hear which is approved: 'But loose every bond of your injustice, undo the obligations of violent bargains, let the broken go free, and tear up every unjust contract. Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the needy who have no roof into your house. If you see one naked, cover him, and do not despise those of your own seed.' You see what the appearance and form of fasting are, what disposition of mind: that you give yourself to prayer, that you meditate on the law of God day and night.

The very appearance of the body is full of gravity. No flush of drunkenness spreads over the cheeks to offend the eyes of those who look, but the face shines venerable with a chaste pallor. Speech is graver, the eye more modest, the step steadier and more measured; for the motion of souls is often betrayed by a more agitated gait. The face is more intent, a kind of judge of its own thought and a silent interpreter of the heart, so that it neither puts on a show of sadness nor dissolves in uncontrolled laughter. Do not think this a superfluous part of our admonition, since Wisdom says in the gospel: 'But when you fast, do not become like the hypocrites, sad.' He said 'hypocrites' because by pretense they put on another's person, as on the stage those who sing tragedies stir up their emotions to fit the words of those whose persons they bear, so as to be angry, grieve, or exult. For these affect to seem to be fasting, wishing to be approved by men rather than by God, as the Jews used to do.

And therefore it is said to us: 'But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so as not to appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you.' What is 'anoint your head'? The luxurious too say: 'Let us fill ourselves with wine and ointments.' For those who seek the charm of bodily fragrance anoint themselves with ointment; but those ointments usually stir the enticement of lust. The ointment of sobriety is another, of which the church says to the bridegroom: 'Your name is ointment poured out'; another is the oil by which the limbs and certain members of the soul grow rich. Hence David too says: 'You have anointed my head with oil'; this is the oil of gladness, with which Jesus Christ was anointed by God the Father, so as to excel above all his companions. With this he bids our head be anointed, so that every feigned sadness may be covered with the oil of gladness, lest you seem to sell your fast to men, lest you seem to be saddened in the salvation of your soul; for no one sad is crowned, no one gloomy triumphs. Anoint, then, your head, where the senses of the wise man are; for the eyes of the wise man are in his head. You are called to the mysteries and do not know; you will learn when you come. But remember this: 'Like ointment on the head that runs down on the beard': then you will know what it is to anoint your head, how you have pleased God, so that he opened his sacraments to you and gave you spiritual grace.

There is also another, mystical head. Which? Hear: 'The head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is Christ.' Pour ointment on Christ, pour ointment also on his head; his head is God. That woman, bearing the type of the church, who poured ointment on his head, confessed his divinity; and she who poured it on his feet confessed his passion. Both are praised: you too do what you may be praised for, so that you may receive the remission of sins. Wash your face, cleanse your sinful soul, wash your conscience. For the face is often the index of the conscience and a kind of silent speech of the mind, when we are either pricked by sin or rejoice in integrity. Do not disfigure this face; wash it and rinse away all the filth of your conscience. He disfigures his face who bears one thing in his heart and shows another outside. Let us not cover ourselves as with a kind of curtain: let what is within shine outside, let what is outside work within. Let no one shut guilt up in his fast; let him bear innocence purely; for fasting is the slayer of guilt.

Let no one prefer sweet things to bitter ones. Pleasure seems sweet, fasting bitter. Let the sweet be removed by this bitter. Bitter things usually do even our bodies more good. For just as, when worms are born in the inmost bowels of children from undigested food, they cannot be killed unless a more bitter drink is poured in or the harsher force of medicines takes effect, by whose smell they die, so the power of fasting, entering the depth of the soul, kills hidden guilt.

What made Esau his brother's servant? Was it not food sweet for the moment, bitter afterward? What gave Jacob lordship over his brother? Was it not contempt of food, more bitter for the time, but healthful for the rest? The very bodies are often puffed up by sweet things, and the liver is distended by honey, yet it is tempered by the bitterness of food. Therefore the riddle is not a mean one but a famous one: 'Out of the eater came forth food, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.' Others have: 'and out of the sad, sweetness' — the Greek manuscripts especially.

But perhaps the strong is also the laborious; for sweetness comes out of sadness or labor. Do not, then, boast when you fast. Do not glory, lest your fast profit you nothing; for things done for display do not extend their fruit to the future but consume the reward of the present. Elijah was in the desert, so that no one would see him fasting except the ravens alone, when they fed him. Elisha was in the desert, where no food was found except bitter. John was in the desert, where he found only locusts or wild honey. To those who fasted, meals were brought by the devoted ministry of angels. Daniel dined among fasting lions. He dined on another's dinner; the beasts did not touch their own. For those who fast, meals fly to them; for those who dine, the feet totter. For those who fast, manna came down from heaven; for those who feast, the guilt of transgression rises up.