From The Catholic Exchange by Caroline Langston
One of the hallmarks of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is the rigorous fast that believers undertake during the long weeks of Lent. If you are observing the Great Fast, as it’s called, you abstain, in theory, from eating all meat and dairy products from “Clean Monday” until that great moment on Pascha (Easter) morning at the end of the Divine Liturgy, when the last chants of Christ is Risen! die down, and everyone repairs to the parish hall for lamb and sweet cheese spread across egg-rich bread. Alcohol is restricted to weekend days and the Feast of the Annunciation, and there are even days prescribed to be “oil free.” (It’s a monastic calendar, can’t you tell?)
But another hallmark of Orthodoxy is that its approach to the Fast tends not to be legalistic. I’ve heard priests who claim that breaking the fast is a sin, and other priests who’ve claimed that breaking the Fast is just a missed opportunity. You may know many Orthodox Christians, particularly cradle believers, who are not especially observant at all of the fasting seasons. Convert Orthodox, especially from those from evangelical Protestant backgrounds, can become so obsessed with “what shall we eat” (So-So Sausage? Black Beans and Rice?) that they can forget that Lent is a time when you should technically be thinking LESS about food, and more about charity and prayer.
And observance of the Fast is always tempered by the duty to accept hospitality when it is offered. Last week we visited my Catholic in-laws in Baltimore, and spent a sunny early spring day watching the children run around the yard with their grandparents. My mother-in-law–for whom it was NOT a fasting day, and who tends not to remember when I’m fasting or not–took out a slab of ground beef and began frying up hamburgers for dinner. O the aromatic smell wafting through the air! She cut onions and toasted buns and made a skillet full of French fries, to boot.
There was a time when I would have shirked off that dinner offering. “I’m fasting,” I’d say, and make a show of eating the tomato and lettuce condiments only. I’m not proud to say that.
But this time I just lifted my eyes, and smile at the generosity of my mother-in-law, the love she shows us all whom she doesn’t often enough get to see. “Thank you,” I said.
The hamburgers were delicious. I’ll have another one in around three more weeks. Or some lamb instead.
But another hallmark of Orthodoxy is that its approach to the Fast tends not to be legalistic. I’ve heard priests who claim that breaking the fast is a sin, and other priests who’ve claimed that breaking the Fast is just a missed opportunity. You may know many Orthodox Christians, particularly cradle believers, who are not especially observant at all of the fasting seasons. Convert Orthodox, especially from those from evangelical Protestant backgrounds, can become so obsessed with “what shall we eat” (So-So Sausage? Black Beans and Rice?) that they can forget that Lent is a time when you should technically be thinking LESS about food, and more about charity and prayer.
And observance of the Fast is always tempered by the duty to accept hospitality when it is offered. Last week we visited my Catholic in-laws in Baltimore, and spent a sunny early spring day watching the children run around the yard with their grandparents. My mother-in-law–for whom it was NOT a fasting day, and who tends not to remember when I’m fasting or not–took out a slab of ground beef and began frying up hamburgers for dinner. O the aromatic smell wafting through the air! She cut onions and toasted buns and made a skillet full of French fries, to boot.
There was a time when I would have shirked off that dinner offering. “I’m fasting,” I’d say, and make a show of eating the tomato and lettuce condiments only. I’m not proud to say that.
But this time I just lifted my eyes, and smile at the generosity of my mother-in-law, the love she shows us all whom she doesn’t often enough get to see. “Thank you,” I said.
The hamburgers were delicious. I’ll have another one in around three more weeks. Or some lamb instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment