Lent is Simple: We Fast from Food

Lent is soon upon us, and with it all the myriad questions I receive about the rules of fasting. What are the rules, exactly? If you look at the Canons, it boils down to this. In the period of Lent, we fast from meat, fish, dairy, wine, and oil until the Resurrection service on Pascha.

Except on Saturdays and Sundays in Lent, during which oil and wine is allowed. And the Annunciation on March 25th, when fish is allowed. Which means that fish is not allowed otherwise in Lent. Which confuses people.

So the questions begin: if I am fasting, can I eat jello, which isn’t meat, but it comes from an animal? If I can’t have jello, why is honey OK?

I thought fish was OK for fasting? Why is shellfish alright and regular fish not? Lobster is $15 per pound, cod is $5. Do I have to go broke eating Lenten food? What if I’m allergic to shellfish but not regular fish? I hear that in Russia they allow smoked fish but not fresh fish during Lent? Why is smoked OK?

Eggs don’t come from a cow: how are they “dairy”? If I can’t have butter, can I have “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”? I can’t believe I don’t have to fast from “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter”! Where’s the Lenten sacrifice in substituting one thing for something else that tastes just like it? Like non-dairy coffee creamer, which is worse for you healthwise than real cream.

What does “No oil” mean? No olive oil? No canola oil? No sesame oil? Why can I eat an olive (which inherently contains olive oil) and not olive oil itself? I’m more likely to eat a salad with dressing than one without. Can’t I have a little dressing?

Does “No wine” mean “No beer”? I hear there are monasteries that have beer during Lent. What about hard apple cider? What about kombucha?

To all these questions, I answer now from the words of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle reading we hear in the Epistle reading for Meatfare Sunday: “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”

The real shame of Lent is when we, in the name of imitating Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, become less like Christ and more like His enemies, analyzing every rule down to the dot of each ‘i’, casting a judgmental eye over what’s on someone else’s plate. We lose every bit of benefit from Lent—every benefit from Christianity, even—when we use fasting as a weapon to condemn others and puff up ourselves. Food will not commend us to God. We are no better off and no worse because of what we eat. Saint Paul originally said these things about food consecrated to pagan gods. If that kind of food can’t affect your soul, then neither can the difference between butter and Parkay.

The point is this: you can follow all the fasting rules of the Orthodox Church to the nth degree and never have an empty stomach once for the whole six weeks. Which means you miss one of the chief reasons for fasting—to be hungry!—and being hungry, to have some true sympathy for the poor and needy, and then to act on that sympathy in measurable ways. Eating lobster instead of tuna fish isn’t fasting, it’s abstaining. And abstaining isn’t all that impressive … it’s something that every diabetic or person with IBS or celiac disease does every day of his life.

Think about that Gospel reading from Matthew 25, the one about seeing Christ naked and clothing him, and sick and tending to him, and hungry, and feeding him. That’s the point: Almsgiving is an inherent part of Lent. If you eat meat every day, but skip a meal here and there and give $10 more than you usually would to the needy each week of Lent, you are in the true spirit of the fast. If you are fasting strictly and canonically and yet spending $10 more a week on special groceries for yourself, you’re doing something wrong.

All this fussiness about foods ignores the basic economic differences between 2000 years ago and today. Lenten fasting rules essentially make a virtue of a necessity. Before refrigeration and modern canning techniques, by the end of winter, the average person—meaning the average poor person— was out of his stock of meat, cured or smoked, until the spring lambs and calves were born; no one had fresh fish until the weather eased up and the boats could go out safely again. In ancient times, vegetarianism in the early spring would have been imposed on all people of any religion. Christians just used this fact to convey a spiritual meaning, to connect the faithful to the 40-Day fast of Christ in the wilderness. They used normal life to help ordinary people feel closer to God. They did not impose new and special restrictions in order to make most people feel farther from grace.

And so our conclusion. In the Orthodox Church, Lent is simple: we fast from food. We go hungry a little bit so that someone else might eat. Or as Saint Euthymius told his monks: Correct abstinence is consuming a little less than the belly would like. In the season of Great and Holy Lent, I invite you—for the sake of the hungry, homeless, hurting Christ out there—give up a meal and feed your Lord instead. This is the Gospel, this is Good News—not only for the poor around us, but for all of us who discover that in skipping a meal, we unknowingly fed the Lord, who rewards us forever with a place at his eternal banquet of love.