FASTING

© 2003 by Orchid Land Publications  

[20030801]

 NOTE:   WITHOUT PRAYERFASTING IS BUT A DIET

      Inquirers have asked me about fasting.  There are questions of WHAT and WHEN. 

      Concerning WHAT:  In the following list, anything allowed implies that everything higher up in the list is allowed.  (E.g. if you see the graphic of a fish on a given day in the calendar, fish is allowed as well as olive oil and alcohol--whose graphic is a bunch of grapes.)  Note that where civil life parties before "Christmas," etc., the Orthodox fasts prior to the important festivals and feast afterwards!

crustaceans, turtles, froglegs, eels, snails, honey* 
"wine/vodka" (= alcohol; few days are wine days)
"fish"  (other than crustaceans)
"cheese" = all dairy products
"meat" (and suet)

The only cheese (dairy products) fast is the week (Monday through the Sabbath preceding Forgiveness Lordsday, the day on which (at Vespers) the Great Fast begins.

     Concerning WHEN:  

Every Wednesday and Friday**
The Nativity Fast***
The Great Fast (which begins with Vespers of Forgiveness Lordsday****
and ends with Friday preceding Palm Lordsday)
Holy Great Week

Apostles Fast (from the second Monday after Trinity Lordsday through June 28)

Dormition Fast (first two weeks of August)

On Sabbaths and Lordsdays, fast are mitigated either to wine days or to oil-and-wine days.  The same relaxation happens when an important festival (or its afterfestival days or closure day, if it has such) co-occurs with a fast day.  You need a reliable calendar to determine each instance.  All jurisdictions publish simple calendars for the laity.  A more detailed LITURGICAL CALENDAR is published for old-calendar usage by the Saint John of Kronstadt Press of Liberty, TN.  (Be sure to order it well in advance if you live at any distance from Liberty, unless you wish to pay a hefty postage fee to get it to arrive in your mailbox in time!) 

     Fast-free periods are:  

Ten days following Christ's Birthday.

               The week following Pascha and Trinity/Pentecost Lordsday 

    A synaxis follows many important festivals; these also mitigate fasting to allow fish.

    The chief festivals are the Lordsdays of the calendar; the chief Lordsday is Pascha--the Festival of Festivals.

    There is no kneeling during the 50 days of Pentecost, during which also the prayer "Heavenly King" is omitted from the Trisagion.

___________________________

       
       *These are always allowed except on the Friday and Sabbath preceding Pascha .    

     **The fasting of Wednesdays and Fridays ( monastics also fast on Mondays as well as Wednesdays and Fridays) is mitigated outside of or during a fasting season; depending on the importance of the festival.  Lordsdays, Sabbaths, and important festivals (including the Entry of the Theototokos on Dec. 21 and St. Nicholas’ day on Dec. 6) are fish-oil-and-wine days, except during the Great Fast.  Lazaros Sabbath is a fish day; it may co-occurs with the Annunciation; Palm Lordsday is a fish day.    (The Meeting of our Lord and the Theotokos with St. Symeon in the Temple [Luke 2:27-34] is in different traditions differently classified—viz. as a festival of Christ or as a festival of the Theotókos.  The dates of the festivals of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Clement of Rome are switched in the Byzantine and Slavic calendars.)  

     ***Many important Saints’ days occur throughout December.  Theoretically, the last few days before Christ's Birthday are more strictly fasted than the earlier parts of the Nativity Fast; but  these days often co-occur with an important festival--one that has a VIGIL (on the preceding evening--with the Blessing of bread, Great Vespers, Great Compline, and the Midnight office).

  ****The Sabbaths and Lordsdays during the Great Fast are oil-and-alcohol days.  Lazaros Sabbath and the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (Palm Lordsday) are fish days, as are higher-ranking festivals during the fast seasons listed here.  Two festivals and mid-Pentecost permit only alcohol.   The Raising of the Life-giving Cross [Sep. 14], though a major festival, is, like St. John the Forerunner’s Beheading, a wine-and-oil day.  The Transfiguration, which always falls during the Dormition Fast, is a fish-wine-and-oil day.  If the Day of the Indiction (Sept. 1, the beginning of the ecclesiastical year) falls on a Wednesday or Friday, it is a wine-and-oil day.   Mid-Pentecost day is observed three and a half weeks following Pascha.  A week later occurs the apodosis of Mid-Pentecost.  Both fall on a Wednesday and are oil-and-wine days.  The apodosis of Pascha itself falls a week after the apodosis of Mid-Pentecost and is also a fish-oil-and-wine day.