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| Source: uncutmountainsupply.com |
Do not define the good derived from fasting only in terms of abstaining from food. For true fasting is being a stranger to vice. Loose every bond of wickedness. Let your neighbor grieve you; forgive him his debts. Do not fast only to quarrel and fight. You do not devour meat, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you have not mastered your arrogance. You wait until evening to partake of food, but you spend your day judging others. Woe to those who are drunk, but not with wine! Anger is a drunken state of the soul because, like wine, it robs the soul of sense. Sadness, too, is a drunken state because it drowns the mind. Fear is another drunken state, when things happen that should not happen. For it says: deliver my soul from fear of the enemy. Generally speaking, since each of the passions disturbs the mind, each can rightly be called a drunken state of the mind. …
Drunkenness leads to licentiousness, sobriety to fasting. The athlete prepares by training, the one who fasts by practicing self-control.
—St. Basil the Great, First Homily on Fasting, as found in On Fasting and Feasts
