Metropolitan Epifaniy called for spiritual fasting through prayer and works of charity
In his Sunday sermon, Metropolitan Epifaniy explained the meaning of various aspects of Great Lent.
Vladyka emphasized that food restriction aims to subjugate flesh to spirit, and is not an end in itself. The Metropolitan also notes that the fight against sin requires prayer and repentance, not compromises with evil. Here is the full text of the sermon.
Gradually, through the preparatory weeks, we enter the period of Great Lent. During these weeks, through singing and reading in the church during the divine service, we increasingly hear reminders of the need for repentance. From tomorrow, church tradition also calls us to limit our consumption of meat. We “let go of meat” from our table.
Why let go? We refuse non-fasting food for a certain time not because it is harmful, sinful, or carries something evil. In the times of the Old Testament, the Lord, for the sake of educating His people, established certain food restrictions for them, forbidding to eat what was called unclean. But through the sacrifice of Christ, all creation received renewal, and therefore the Lord reveals His will so that the faithful no longer consider anything impure and eat all food with gratitude.
The apostle Peter had a famous vision about this, described in the book of Acts. “Peter at around six o’clock went out on the roof of the house to pray, and he felt hungry and wanted to eat. While they were cooking, terror came over him, and he saw the open sky and some kind of vessel, like a large canvas, tied by its four ends, descending to the earth and coming down to him; in it were all earthly quadrupeds, and beasts, and reptiles, and birds of the air. And there was a voice to him: ‘Get up, Peter, slaughter and eat.’ Peter said: ‘No, Lord, I have never eaten anything bad or unclean.’ Then a second time there was a voice to him: ‘What God has cleansed, do not consider it impure.’ This happened three times; and the vessel rose again into heaven.” (Acts 10:9-16).
Therefore, later, at the Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem, it was established that the Old Testament laws about clean and unclean food no longer apply. Therefore, we, as New Testament Christians, when we fast, do not do so because the food that we refuse for this period, that we “let go” from our table, is supposedly in itself evil, impure or sinful.
On the contrary, last Sunday we heard from the reading of the parable of the prodigal son that the father, out of joy when his son came back alive, ordered a fattened calf to be slaughtered for a feast. And we know from our own experience that a variety of delicious and nutritious food accompanies various celebrations.
But the time of fasting is the time of repentance. This is the time when we realize our own faults, our sins. Should we rejoice and be merry at this time? On the contrary, we should limit ourselves to only what is necessary and sufficient, and we should postpone the meal of joy, the feast of celebration, let it go from our table until the day when with a solemn feast we will properly honor the holiday above holidays and the triumph among celebrations – Easter, the Lord’s Passover.
All of us, dear brothers and sisters, remember how the Fall occurred – due to the violation by our forefathers of the commandment not to eat fruit from the tree, which the Lord told them was forbidden. Therefore, sin entered a man through intemperance, and precisely because of intemperance in food. Therefore, fasting for us is a matter that teaches self-restraint: through self-restraint, we teach self-restraint to our soul.
Scripture tells us that we have only one real, true enemy – the devil and his minions, evil spirits. Weapons are needed to fight the enemy. And the Lord gives us such a weapon, saying that it is fasting and prayer, with which the demon race is driven away. “This kind cannot come out except by prayer and fasting” (Mk. 9:29), the Gospel conveys the words of Christ to us.
Fasting is voluntary self-restraint, a manifestation of our humility before God, it is a way of subjugating our flesh to the spirit. And prayer is our communication with God, through which we express our faith and love for the Creator and open ourselves to the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit. That is why the Church, fulfilling the Lord’s commandment, established periods for our fasting, the most important of which is the one for which we are preparing – the great fast, which will last seven weeks, until the feast of the Resurrection of Christ.
However, fasting is not only about food restrictions. The Scriptures also tell us about this. “The kingdom of God,” the Apostle Paul testifies in the Epistle to the Romans, “is not food and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Therefore, the current reading from the Gospel, which we hear, Christ’s prophetic story about the Last Judgment, reminds us of the importance of acts of mercy, acts of love for one’s neighbor. God will judge us on the last day of earth’s history based on the way we have shown our love for our neighbors through our actions, or on the contrary, have not had it.
And what we currently hear from the Gospel is not a parable, not the use of certain symbolic images, but it is a true prophecy of the Son of God about what will certainly happen in the future. The day of judgment will come for all and sundry. The dead will be resurrected, and the living at that time will be changed so that all people can stand before the Savior, who is no longer in humility, as He came the first time, but will appear a second time in all His divine glory.
So this prophecy reminds each of us of our personal responsibility, of the account we have to make before the Lord for how we have used God’s gift of life. That life, which is like a precious talent, entrusted to us by the Creator. Did they enhance this talent with good works of faith and charity, or on the contrary, like a prodigal son, did they waste their father’s inheritance on sin and evil?
I wish all of us, dear brothers and sisters, a good, fruitful, spiritually useful time of fasting. Starting tomorrow, we will let go of all meat from our table, and in a week we will let go of other, non-fasting foods, so that through restraint, through prayer and repentance, through good deeds, through sacrificial mercy to our neighbors, which Christ accepts as done for He himself is much more to gain. Get that weapon against the devil and his servants, get a sword and armor with which we will be firmly protected from the attacks of the evil one.
After all, the power of evil, the power of temptation is great. And many people, seeing them, cannot resist them and fly a white flag, thinking that it is possible to somehow coexist with the evil one, having come to a peaceful agreement. Such people reject the weapons that God Himself gave us, forget about fasting and prayer, forget about the truth that is communicated to us through the Gospel, thinking that if we come to an agreement with evil somewhere, as if “in the middle”, then it will stop attacking us. This is all just one of the devil’s temptations.
The other day we remembered the memory of the forty Martyrs of Sebastien. They, like all martyrs, did not lay down their spiritual weapons before the power of untruth, they did not capitulate, did not ask for mercy from the tormentors and did not seek to find a compromise with them, because a person cannot, as Christ Himself said, “serve two masters, because either one will hate and love the other, or show favor to one and neglect the other” (Luke 16:13).
So, dear brothers and sisters, let us serve God with faith embodied in deeds, in works of mercy, in prayer, and in fasting – and may the Lord bless us with good fruits in this life, and on the day of judgment – place us at His right hand, opening the doors of paradise to us. Amen.
