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A Word About the Great Fast
St. Theodore the Studite
What is this struggle? Not to walk according to one’s own will. This is better than the other works of zeal and is a crown of martyrdom; except that for you there is also a change of diet, multiplication of prostrations and increase of psalmody all in accord with the established tradition from of old. And so I ask, let us welcome gladly the gift of the fast, not making ourselves miserable, as we are taught, but let us advance with cheerfulness of heart, innocent, not slandering, not angry, not evil, not envying; rather peaceable toward each other, and loving, fair, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits; breathing in seasonable stillness, since hubbub is damaging in a community; speaking suitable words, since too unreasonable stillness is profitless; yet above all vigilantly keeping watch over our thoughts, not opening the door to the passions, not giving place to the devil.
We are lords of ourselves; let us not open our door to the devil; rather let us keep guard over our soul as a bride of Christ, unwounded by the arrows of the thoughts; for thus we are able to become a dwelling of God in Spirit.
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What I find rather amazing about this passage from St. Theodore (+826), is that as an abbot of a famous monastery in Constantinople, he was by all accounts a very austere ascetic. He mentions fasting, prostrations and psalmody almost as an afterthought, or simply to remind his fellow monastics that those practices are naturally "built in" to the lenten season. His description of a community free of the many divisive passions that can undermine any community, is so applicable to the setting of any contemporary Orthodox parish, that his exhortation could come from the hand of any parish priest encouraging his parishioners to treat one another with Christian love and respect.
No matter what the setting, the same temptations to live according to the "old Adam" are ever present. Our goal is to follow the "new (and last) Adam," Christ.
