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Course 21 · Lesson 3.4

Lent, the Orthodox fasting seasons and Protestant approaches to fasting

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 21 outline

Module 1: The Theology of Worship

  1. What liturgy is: the word, the idea and the debate
  2. Worship in the Old and New Testaments
  3. Praying and believing: how worship shapes doctrine and doctrine shapes worship
  4. Word, sacrament and sign across the traditions

Module 2: How Christian Liturgy Developed

  1. The earliest descriptions: the Didache, Justin Martyr and the early church orders
  2. The liturgical families of East and West
  3. The Reformation and the revision of worship
  4. Liturgical renewal in the twentieth century

Module 3: The Christian Year: Calendars, Feasts and Fasts

  1. Sunday, the week and the hours of the day
  2. Easter, Holy Week and the dispute over the date
  3. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
  4. Lent, the Orthodox fasting seasons and Protestant approaches to fasting
  5. Saints days and the second cycle of the calendar

Module 4: Sacred Space and Sacred Images

  1. From house church to basilica: the development of church buildings
  2. The meaning of church buildings: altar, table, orientation and the Orthodox and Gothic examples
  3. Icons and the Incarnation: John of Damascus and the Second Council of Nicaea
  4. Images and the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican approaches

Module 5: Material Signs: Incense, Water, Oil and Blessings

  1. Incense: Scripture, temple worship and its use in the churches
  2. Water: baptism, the renewal of baptismal vows and holy water
  3. Oil: anointing of the sick, chrismation, confirmation and ordination
  4. Blessings: what the church means when it blesses a person, a house or an object
  5. Sacraments and sacramentals: the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant vocabulary

Module 6: Popular Piety and Devotional Practice

  1. What popular piety is, and why scholars take it seriously
  2. Pilgrimage, relics, medals and pious objects
  3. The rosary, the Stations of the Cross, litanies and akathists
  4. How the churches have regulated and corrected popular devotion

Module 7: Telling Tradition from Superstition

  1. What the theologians mean by superstition, and why the line is hard to draw
  2. A method: source, date, doctrine, authority and consequence
  3. Case studies: apocryphal legends, magical formulas and invented history
  4. Honesty and respect in judging other people’s devotion

All courses

Program / Course 21: Liturgical Theology / Lesson 3.4

What you will learn

  • Explain the purpose of fasting in Scripture and the early church.
  • Describe Lent in Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran use and the four Orthodox fasting seasons.
  • Summarize what Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Wesley taught about fasting.
  • State the cautions that the churches give about fasting and the limits of fasting alone.

The big idea

Fasting is a very old Christian practice, rooted in Scripture and in the church’s preparation for the great feasts. Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans keep Lent for forty days before Easter. The Orthodox keep four fasting seasons and weekly fasts. Reformed and free-church Protestants have often treated fasting as a voluntary or occasional discipline. All the traditions teach that fasting is not a way to earn God’s favor or to force results, and that those who are ill, pregnant, young or old need to be treated with care.

Key terms

Fast
Going without some or all food for a time, or going without certain foods, in order to pray and repent.
Abstinence
In Catholic use, going without meat on certain days. It is distinguished from fasting, which is eating less.
Lent
From an Old English word for spring. The forty days before Easter, a season of repentance and preparation.
Ash Wednesday
The first day of Lent in the West, on which a cross of ashes is marked on the forehead of many Christians.
Great Lent
The Orthodox name for the pre-Easter season, which begins on Clean Monday and ends before Holy Week.
Apostles’ Fast and Dormition Fast
Two Orthodox fasting seasons: one before the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, and one from 1 to 14 August before the Dormition of the Mother of God.
Ember days
Traditional Western days of fasting at the turn of the four seasons, now less widely kept.

Background

Scripture shows fasting in the Law and the Prophets (Joel 2:12; Isaiah 58:6-7), in Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2), and in his teaching that his disciples will fast after he is taken away (Matthew 9:15). He also warned against fasting to be seen by others (Matthew 6:16-18). In Acts the church fasts before sending out Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2-3). The Didache, as seen earlier, calls for fasts on Wednesday and Friday.

A fast before Easter is known from the second century, at first of one or two days. By the fourth century a forty-day season is attested, for example in the festal letters of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, from the 330s. The church fathers saw it as a time to prepare candidates for baptism at Easter and to restore penitents, and the whole church joined in. The number forty recalls the days of Moses and Elijah and of Christ in the wilderness.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Lent in the West

In the Western church the forty days came to be counted from Ash Wednesday, so that the six weeks excluding Sundays make forty fasting days. Catholic law today requires fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday for adults aged 18 to 59, and abstinence from meat on those days and on the Fridays of Lent for those aged 14 and older. The rules allow for exceptions for illness and need. Anglican and Lutheran churches mark Ash Wednesday and Lent as well, with the fast left largely to the conscience of the individual, in the Lutheran case following Luther’s view that fasting is a good outward discipline when not made a means of earning merit.

Step 2: The Orthodox seasons

Orthodox practice sets four main fasting seasons: Great Lent and Holy Week, the Apostles’ Fast, the Dormition Fast and the Nativity Fast. It also sets Wednesday and Friday as fasting days throughout most of the year. The usual rule in the strict form abstains from meat, dairy products and eggs, with fish and wine and oil permitted on some days. Each parish priest or spiritual father guides the faithful in applying the rule, and the church allows relief for the sick, the elderly, travelers, the pregnant and young children. The Orthodox say that the fast is not only about food but about prayer, almsgiving and reconciliation. Great Lent has its own services, such as the Presanctified Liturgy and the Akathist hymn, as well as a long penitential canon.

Step 3: The Reformers on fasting

Luther rejected the idea that fasting merits grace, but he commended it as a good outward training, and in the Small Catechism he says that fasting and bodily preparation have their place. Zwingli, after some Zurich townsmen ate sausages during Lent in 1522, defended them, arguing that Scripture did not command a fixed fast. Calvin in the Institutes (book 4, chapter 12) gave a long defense of fasting, which he said should be public in times of need and private as a help to prayer, but not turned into a law binding the conscience. The Westminster tradition kept days of public fasting and thanksgiving called by authority. John Wesley urged his preachers to fast on Wednesday and Friday, which echoes the early church.

Step 4: Cautions

Every tradition insists that fasting must be joined to prayer and to care for the poor, as in Isaiah 58, and must not become a show or a method for compelling God. Churches also teach that those who are ill, pregnant, nursing, elderly, very young or under medical care should not fast from food. People with a history of disordered eating should speak with a physician and a pastor before taking up a fast from food. In many cases, fasting from other things, such as screens or spending, is a wise substitute, and many traditions encourage it as equivalent.

Step 5: What a person alone can do

Fasting is one of the practices that can be done privately, and Jesus teaches that it be done in secret (Matthew 6:17-18). A person can keep Lent at home with the Psalms, Scripture reading, almsgiving and simple meals. The churches advise that a person do so with the counsel of a pastor, a priest or a spiritual father or mother, since fasting without guidance can harm the body or breed pride. The communal acts of Lent, such as the imposition of ashes or the Presanctified Liturgy, belong to the church.

  1. What does this tradition ask of its members, and by what authority?
  2. Is the fast a law, a custom or a recommendation?
  3. What reasons does the tradition give for fasting?
  4. How does it protect the sick and the weak?
  5. Is the fast joined to prayer and almsgiving?
  6. Would I be able to keep it in secret, as Jesus asks, without showing off?

Examples

A Catholic Lent

A Catholic office worker eats one full meal and two small ones on Ash Wednesday, abstains from meat on Fridays of Lent, and gives up a daily indulgence. He gives the money saved to a food pantry and attends the Stations of the Cross on Fridays.

An Orthodox Great Lent

An Orthodox family avoids meat, dairy and eggs through Great Lent, with fish on the feast of the Annunciation, and attends the extra services of the season. Her parish priest advises that a pregnant daughter not follow the full rule. (A constructed example.)

A Baptist fast

A Baptist congregation sets aside a day of prayer and fasting before a major decision. Members decide for themselves how to take part, and some give up one meal. This is an occasional fast and not a calendar season.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Lent is a season of penance, prayer and almsgiving, with Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as days of fast and abstinence. The church sets a minimum and encourages more, while forbidding that fasting be a display.

Orthodox

Fasting is an essential part of the spiritual life, structured by the calendar and guided by the confessor. The strictness is not meant as a burden but as a path to freedom and prayer, and the church adapts it for those who cannot keep it fully.

Lutheran and Anglican

Both keep Lent, with fasting regarded as a good discipline but not a law binding the conscience. The Anglican Prayer Book lists days of fasting and abstinence.

Reformed

Fasting is commended in Scripture and may be kept publicly or privately, but the church may not bind consciences with fixed rules. Public fasts have been called in times of need, and the Reformed have often not kept Lent as a season.

Free-church and Methodist

Fasting is a voluntary spiritual discipline, often practiced alone or in groups before a task or decision. Wesley’s call to fast twice a week has influenced Methodists, and many evangelical churches today encourage occasional fasts.

Why it matters

Fasting is among the most misunderstood Christian practices. Some see it as a mere diet and others as a way of earning favor. Studying how the traditions teach it makes plain that all of them treat it as a discipline joined to prayer and love of neighbor, and that all of them have cautions. A student can apply this to their own life honestly, without exaggerating what the practice does.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Lent is mentioned in the Bible.

Correction: The Bible records fasting and the forty days of Christ in the wilderness, but the season of Lent is a later church practice, attested in the fourth century and developing from earlier forms.

Misunderstanding: Fasting earns God’s favor.

Correction: No major tradition teaches this. Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants each describe fasting as a means of prayer and repentance, and Jesus warns against doing it to be seen.

Misunderstanding: Protestants reject fasting.

Correction: Luther, Calvin and Wesley all commended it. Protestants differ in not making it a binding rule.

Misunderstanding: Fasting from food is safe for everyone.

Correction: Every tradition exempts those for whom it would be harmful, and recommends medical advice where there is doubt.

Knowledge check

What does Matthew 6:16-18 teach about fasting?

Jesus tells his disciples not to look gloomy and disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting, but to anoint the head and wash the face, so that the fasting is seen only by the Father. It sets the inner purpose above the display.

Name the four Orthodox fasting seasons.

Great Lent with Holy Week, the Apostles’ Fast, the Dormition Fast and the Nativity Fast. Wednesdays and Fridays are also fasting days for most of the year.

What did Calvin say about fasting?

In the Institutes he defended fasting as a help to prayer and a fitting response in times of public need, but said that it is not a law that may bind the conscience and not a work that earns merit.

What cautions do the churches give?

Fasting should be joined to prayer and almsgiving, not done for show, and it should be adapted for the sick, the pregnant, the elderly and the young. Those with histories of disordered eating should seek medical and pastoral advice.

Think it through

  1. What is the difference between fasting and dieting?
  2. Why might a church set a rule, and why might another leave the matter to conscience?
  3. What could you give up for a season that would help you pray?
  4. How do you tell the difference between discipline and self-harm?

Independent assignment

A fasting rule with limits

In your own notebook, write 300 to 500 words. Describe a modest practice of fasting or abstinence you could keep for a week, based on one tradition’s teaching. State what you would keep, what exceptions you would allow, how you would pair it with prayer and giving, and who you would consult first. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study