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Dear Parish Faithful,
“Do not fast to quarrel and fight, but loose every bond of iniquity” [Is 58.4, 6]. And the Lord [adds]: “Do not be gloomy, but wash your face and anoint your head” [Mt 6.16–17]. So let us acquire the disposition that we have been taught, not looking gloomy on the days [of fasting] we are currently observing, but cheerfully disposed toward them, as is fitting for the saints. No one crowned is despondent; no one glum holds up a trophy. Do not be gloomy while you are being healed. It is absurd not to rejoice in the soul’s health, and rather to sorrow over the change in food and to appear to favor the pleasure of the stomach over the care of the soul. After all, while self-indulgence gratifies the stomach, fasting brings gain to the soul. Be cheerful since the Physician has given you sin-destroying medicine.
—St Basil the Great, First Homily on Fasting (Translated by Susan R. Holman and Mark DelCogliano in On Fasting and Feasts)
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This Great Lent, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary is offering a lenten meditation per day throughout the course of the Fast. So, I "signed us up," for this helpful feature, and have been sharing them with the parish with some regularity. There are different themes, coming from either liturgical texts, the Church Fathers, or more contemporary writers. There seems to be a good variety of approaches to Great Lent on the whole.
This particular meditation is a rather "classic" and holistic teaching from St. Basil the Great. As we fast with perhaps greater intensity on Wednesdays, in preparation for the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, this seems like a timely reminder of the purpose behind this practice. His final phrase implying that fasting is potentially a "sin-destroying medicine" is a rather arresting image.
