Homilies and Sermons 1.1–1.11

"Blow the trumpet," it says, "at the new moon, on the well-marked day of your feast." This is a command of the prophet. But to us the readings announce the feast of the days ahead louder than any trumpet and more clearly than any musical instrument. For we have learned the grace of fasting from Isaiah, who rejected the Jewish manner of fasting and showed us true fasting: "Do not fast for lawsuits and quarrels, but loose every bond of injustice." And the Lord: "Do not be gloomy, but wash your face and anoint your head." Let us then be disposed as we have been taught: not sullen at the approaching days, but cheerful toward them, as befits … No one who is downcast sets up a trophy. Do not be gloomy while you are being healed. It is absurd not to rejoice at the health of the soul, but to grieve at a change of diet, and to be seen to give more favor to the pleasure of the belly than to the care of the soul. For satiety confines its favor to the belly, but fasting brings its profit up to the soul. Take heart that the physician has given you a medicine that destroys sin. For as the worms bred in children's bowels …, so fasting, entering the soul, kills the sin that lurks in its depths …

[2] "Anoint your head and wash your face." The word calls you to mysteries. He who has been anointed has been chrismated; he who has washed has been cleansed. Take the legislation about the members to the inward parts. Wash your soul clean of sins. Anoint your head with holy chrism, that you may become a partaker of Christ, and so come to the fast. "Do not disfigure your face like the hypocrites." A face is disfigured when the inward disposition is darkened by a counterfeit outward appearance, hidden by the lie as by a curtain. A hypocrite is one who on the stage puts on another's face: being a slave, he often plays the master, and being a private man, the king. So too in this life most people play a part on the stage of their own lives, carrying one thing in their heart and displaying another to people on the surface. Do not, then, disfigure your face. Show yourself as you are. Do not put on a gloomy look, hunting the reputation of seeming to be self-controlled. For there is no gain in doing good for show: what is done for display does not stretch its fruit to the age to come but ends in human praise. Run, then, cheerfully to the gift of fasting. Fasting is an ancient gift, which does not grow old or wear out but is always renewed and comes back to its prime.

Do you think I place its antiquity in the law? Fasting is older even than the law. If you wait a little, you will find the truth of what I say. Do not suppose that the day of atonement, appointed for Israel in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, was the beginning of fasting. Come, go through history and search out its antiquity. For it is no recent invention; it is a treasure of the fathers. Everything that excels in antiquity is venerable. Respect the gray hair of fasting. [fast]ing was legislated in paradise. Adam received the first commandment: "From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat." And "you shall not eat" is a law of fasting and self-control. If Eve had fasted from the tree, we would not now need this fast. For "those who are strong have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." We have been made sick through sin; let us be healed through repentance. But repentance without fasting … not to live in luxury. Make your defence to God through fasting. Indeed the life in paradise is an image of fasting, not only because man, sharing the angels' way of life, achieved likeness to them by having little, but also because the things that human ingenuity later invented, not yet were there for those in paradise … sacrifices, nor the things that cloud the human mind.

Because we did not fast, we fell from [paradise; let us fast, then, that we may return to it] … Do you not see how Lazarus entered paradise through fasting? Do not imitate Eve's disobedience; do not again accept the serpent as counsellor, who suggests eating out of concern for the flesh. Do not plead bodily sickness and weakness. For you are giving your excuses not to me but to him who knows. You cannot fast, tell me? Yet you can stuff yourself all your life and crush your body with the weight of what you eat? And yet I know that doctors prescribe for the sick not a variety of foods but abstinence and want. How then, when you can do the one, do you plead that you cannot do the other? Which is easier for the stomach: to pass the night on a plain diet, or to lie weighed down with an abundance of food, or rather not to lie at all but to keep tossing about, bursting and groaning? … [as a ship that is heavily laden is harder] to save than one that is trim and light. For a small rising of the wave swamps the one pressed down by its load, but the one that carries a moderate cargo easily rises over the surge, since nothing prevents it from riding higher. So too human bodies, weighed down by constant satiety, easily go under in sickness; but those that use a trim, light diet both escape the expected evil of disease as if escaping the rising of a storm, and fend off the present trouble as if the onset of a reef. Surely, by your reckoning, being still would be more laborious than running, and resting than wrestling, if luxury is really more suitable for the sick, as you say, than a simple diet. For the power that governs the living creature easily works through sufficiency and simplicity and assimilates them to what it nourishes; but when it receives costly and varied foods and then is not able to master them to the end, it produces the various kinds of diseases.

But let our discourse walk through history, going over the antiquity of fasting, and how all the saints received it like an inheritance from their fathers and kept it, father handing it on to son, so that by orderly succession the possession has been preserved down to us. There was no wine in paradise, no slaughter of animals, no eating of meat. After the flood, wine; after the flood, "You shall eat all things as green plants." When perfection was despaired of, then enjoyment was permitted. A proof that wine was unknown is that Noah did not know how to use it. For it had not yet come into common life, nor become familiar in human use. So, having neither seen another drink it nor tried it himself, Noah fell into its harm unawares: "he drank of the fruit and became drunk," not because he was a drunkard but because he did not know the measure of partaking. So much younger than paradise is the discovery of wine-drinking, and so ancient the dignity of fasting.

We also know that Moses approached the mountain through fasting. For he would not have dared approach the smoking summit, nor had the courage to enter the darkness, had he not been armed with fasting. Through fasting he received the commandment written on the tablets by the finger of God. And above, fasting was the agent of lawgiving; below, gluttony drove the people mad into idolatry: "For the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." A single bout of drunkenness made useless the forty days' attendance of the servant who fasted and prayed. For the tablets, written by the finger of God, which fasting had received, drunkenness broke, since the prophet judged that a drunken people was not worthy to receive law from God. In one moment, through gluttony, that people which had been taught by God through the greatest wonders … both. [See] how fasting brings one to God …

What profaned Esau and made him his brother's slave? Was it not a single meal, for which he sold his birthright? And was it not prayer with fasting that granted Samuel to his mother? What made the great champion Samson invincible? Was it not fasting, with which he was conceived in his mother's womb? Fasting conceived him, fasting nursed him, fasting made him a man: the fasting the angel prescribed to his mother: "Whatever comes from the vine she shall not eat, and wine and strong drink she shall not drink." Fasting begets prophets, strengthens the mighty, makes lawgivers wise; it is a good safeguard of the soul, a safe companion for the body, a weapon for the valiant, a training ground for athletes. It repels temptations, anoints for piety; it is the companion of sobriety, the maker of self-control. In war it acts bravely; in peace it teaches quiet. It sanctifies the Nazirite, perfects the priest. For it is not possible to venture on sacred ministry without fasting, not only in the mystical and true worship now, but also in the figurative worship offered under the law. Fasting made Elijah a spectator of the great vision: for having cleansed his soul by a fast of forty days, he was thus counted worthy to see the Lord in the cave at Horeb, as far as it is possible for a human being to see. Fasting, he gave the widow back her son, showing himself strong against death through fasting. A voice coming from a fasting mouth shut heaven against the lawless people for three years and six months. For to soften the untamed heart of the stiff-necked, he chose to condemn himself also to hardship. That is why he said, "As the Lord lives, there shall be no water on the earth except through my mouth." And he brought a fast on all the people through the famine, to correct the wickedness that came from luxury and a dissolute life. And what was Elisha's life like? How did he enjoy hospitality with the Shunammite woman, and how did he himself receive the prophets? Was it not with wild herbs and … a little meal that he fulfilled his hospitality? When even … had touched it, [they would have perished] had not the poison been rendered harmless by the prayer of the faster. And … fasting that led all the saints by the hand into the life that accords with God.

There is a kind of substance, which they call amiantus, that fire cannot consume: lying in the flame it seems to be turned to charcoal, but taken out of the fire it becomes cleaner, as if washed with water. Such were the bodies of those three young men in Babylon, which had from fasting this incorruptible quality. In the great flame of the furnace, as if they were gold by nature, they proved superior to harm from the fire. Indeed they proved stronger even than gold, for the fire did not melt them but kept them unharmed. And yet nothing could have withstood that flame, fed by naphtha, pitch and brushwood, so that it poured out to forty-nine cubits and, spreading round about, consumed many of the Chaldeans. Into that pyre, then, the young men went with fasting and trod it underfoot, breathing a fine, dewy air in so fierce a fire. The fire did not dare touch even their hair, because it had been nourished by fasting.

[7] And Daniel, "the man of desires," who ate no bread and drank no water for three weeks, taught even the lions to fast when he went down into the den. For as if he had been put together of stone or bronze or some other harder material, the lions could not get their teeth into him. As tempering hardens iron, so fasting had steeled the man's body and made it invincible to the lions: they did not open their mouths against the saint. Fasting "quenched the power of fire, stopped the mouths of lions." Fasting sends prayer up to heaven, becoming as it were a wing for it on the journey upward. Fasting is the growth of households, the mother of health, the tutor of youth, a safe tentmate for those who live together. A husband does not suspect plots against his marriage when he sees his wife living with fasts. A wife does not pine with jealousy when she sees her husband embracing the fast. Who has diminished his household by fasting? Count … [nothing] of what is in the house will be lacking because of the fast. No animal mourns its death; nowhere is there blood; nowhere is a sentence pronounced against animals by the inexorable belly. The cooks' knife has stopped; the table is content with what grows of itself. The Sabbath was given to the Jews "that your beast of burden and your servant may rest," it says. Let fasting be a rest from constant labors for the servants who wait on us all year round. Give your cook a rest; give your table-servant leave; stay the hand of your cup-bearer; let the man who devises varieties of pastries stop for once. Let the house too be quiet for once from its countless noises, from the smoke and the smell of roasting, and from those who run up and down serving the belly as an inexorable mistress. Even tax collectors sometimes allow their subjects a little freedom. Let the belly also give the mouth some truce; let it make a five-day treaty with us, the belly which always demands and never stops, which takes today and tomorrow plays the philosopher; when it has been relieved, it forgets what it was given.

Fasting does not know the nature of a loan. The table of one who fasts does not smell of interest. The orphaned child of one who fasts is not strangled by his father's debts, coiling round him like snakes. Besides, fasting is an occasion of good cheer. For as thirst makes drink sweet, and hunger going before makes the table pleasant, so fasting brightens the enjoyment of food. By placing itself in between and interrupting the continuity of luxury, it will make partaking seem desirable to you, like a friend returned from abroad. So if you wish to make your table desirable to yourself, accept the change that fasting brings. But you, by being so wholly given to luxury, are unawares dimming your luxury, and through love of pleasure destroying pleasure. For nothing is so desirable that it does not become contemptible through continual enjoyment; but the things whose possession is rare are eagerly enjoyed. So too he who made us, through the … of the things given, contrived [variety]. Do you not see that the sun is brighter after the night? And waking sweeter after sleep? And health more desirable after experience of its opposite? So too the table is more pleasing after fasting, alike for the rich who keep a good table and for those who live simply and …

Fear the example of the rich man. Lifelong luxury delivered him to the fire. For he was charged not with injustice but with soft living, and he was roasted in the flame of the furnace. To quench that fire, then, we need water. Fasting is useful not only for what is to come but is more profitable for the flesh itself. For extreme good health has its reversals, when nature gives way and cannot bear the weight of its good condition. Take care that you do not now spit out water and later long for a drop, like the rich man. No one ever got a hangover from water. No one's head ever ached from being weighed down with water. No one living on water ever needed someone else's feet. No one's feet were ever bound, no one's hands made useless, by being watered. For faulty digestion, which necessarily follows those who live in luxury, produces violent diseases in the body. The complexion of one who fasts is dignified, not breaking out in a shameless flush but adorned with a modest pallor; his face is thoughtful, not outraged by unbridled laughter; his speech is measured, his heart pure. Remember the saints of old, "of whom the world was not worthy," who "went about in sheepskins and goatskins"; imitate their way of life, if you seek a share with them. What gave Lazarus rest in Abraham's bosom? Was it not fasting? And John's life was one fast: he had no bed, no table, no arable land, no ploughing ox, no grain, no baker, nothing else of the things of ordinary life. That is why "among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist." Fasting too, with everything else, which he counted among his boasts in afflictions, brought Paul up to the third heaven. And to crown what has been said, our Lord, having fortified with fasting the flesh he took up for us, in it received the devil's assaults, teaching us to anoint and train ourselves with fasts for the contests of temptation, and giving the adversary a hold, as it were, through his hunger. For because of the height of his divinity he was unapproachable to the devil, had he not stooped to the human level through his hunger. But on his return to heaven he took food, to give proof of the nature of the risen body. But you, fattening yourself and pampering your flesh, do not let up, while you waste your mind away in starvation … … of the saving and life-giving teachings, and take no account of them? Do you not know that, as in a battle line help given to one side brings defeat on the other, so he who sides with the flesh overpowers the spirit, and he who goes over to the spirit enslaves the flesh? For "these are opposed to one another." So if you wish to make your mind strong, tame the flesh by fasting. This is what the apostle says: "Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed," and "When I am weak, then I am strong." Will you not despise perishable foods? Will you not conceive a desire for the table in the kingdom, which fasting here certainly prepares? Do you not know that by immoderate satiety you are fattening for yourself the tormenting worm? For who, with abundant food and continual luxury, ever received any share of a spiritual gift? Moses, when he received the law a second time, needed a second fast. If the Ninevites had not fasted, with even the brute beasts fasting with them, they would not have escaped the threat of overthrow. Whose bodies fell in the wilderness? Was it not those who craved meat? As long as they were content with the manna and the water from the rock, they defeated the Egyptians and passed through the sea; "there was not one feeble among their tribes." But when they remembered the flesh-pots and turned back to Egypt in their desires, they did not see the land of promise. Do you not fear the example? Do you not shudder at gluttony, lest it shut you out from the good things you hope for? Not even the wise Daniel would have seen his visions had he not made his soul clearer by fasting. For from rich food rise fumes like a kind of soot, which cut off the illuminations that come from the Holy Spirit upon the mind. And if there is any food of angels, it is bread, as the prophet says: "Man ate the bread of angels"; not meat, nor wine, nor the things that the slaves of the belly are eager for. Fasting is a weapon against the army of demons: "This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting."

So great are the goods of fasting; but satiety is the beginning of outrage. For along with luxury, drunkenness and every kind of delicacy there at once rushes in every form of beastly licentiousness. Hence men become "horses mad for females" because of the frenzy that luxury breeds in the soul. From drunkards come the perversions of nature, seeking the female in the male and the male in the female. But fasting teaches measure even in married acts, and restraining excess even in what the law permits, it brings about leisure by agreement, "that they may devote themselves to prayer."

Do not, however, limit the good of fasting to abstinence from foods alone. For true fasting is estrangement from evils. "Loose every bond of injustice." Forgive your neighbor the injury; forgive him his debts. "Do not fast for lawsuits and quarrels." You do not eat meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you do not restrain your insolence. You wait for evening to take food, but you spend the day in the law courts. "Woe to those who are drunk, but not from wine." Anger is drunkenness of the soul, making it senseless as wine does. Grief too is drunkenness, drowning the understanding. Fear is another drunkenness, when it is felt for what it should not be: "From fear of the enemy," it says, "deliver my soul." And in general each of the passions, since it drives the understanding out of itself, may rightly be called drunkenness. Picture to yourself an angry man, how he is drunk with his passion. He is not master of himself; he does not know himself, he does not know those present; as in a night battle he lays hands on everyone, abuses everyone, strikes, threatens, swears, shouts, bursts. Flee this drunkenness, and do not accept the drunkenness of wine either. Do not anticipate water-drinking with heavy drinking. Do not let drunkenness initiate you into fasting. There is no entrance into fasting through drunkenness, any more than into justice through greed, or into chastity through licentiousness, or, in a word, into virtue through vice. There is another door to fasting. Drunkenness leads into licentiousness; self-sufficiency into fasting. The athlete trains beforehand; the one who fasts practises self-control beforehand. Do not, as if taking revenge on the days or outwitting the lawgiver, lay up a debauch beforehand for the five days. For it is useless labor … the want. The storehouse cannot be trusted: you are drawing water into a leaking jar. For the wine runs through and goes its own way, but the sin remains. A slave runs away from a master who beats him; do you stay with wine, which beats your head every day? The best measure for using wine is the body's need. But if you go beyond the limits, reeking of stale wine, everything will seem to you to spin round and shake. For drunkenness brings on sleep, the brother of death, and a waking like dreams.

Do you know who it is you are about to receive? He who promised us, "I and the Father will come and make our dwelling with him." Why then do you forestall him with drunkenness and shut the door on the Master? Why do you urge the enemy to occupy your strongholds first? Drunkenness does not receive the Lord; drunkenness drives away the Holy Spirit. As smoke drives away bees, so debauchery drives away spiritual gifts. Fasting is the decorum of a city, the stability of the marketplace, the peace of households, the safety of possessions. Do you wish to see its dignity? Compare this evening with tomorrow, and you will see the city turned from confusion and turmoil to deep calm. I pray that today too may be like tomorrow in dignity … May the Lord, who has brought us to this turn of the year, grant us, like athletes who have shown firmness and vigour of endurance in these preliminary contests, to reach also the principal day of the crowns: now the day of the remembrance of the saving passion, and in the age to come the day of the recompense for the lives we have led, in the righteous judgment of his Christ; for to him be the glory for ever. Amen.