Fr. Rafail Noica: Craving Fasting
I am not talking about fasting as a performance, but as a spiritual need...
Excerpt from a conference held in Cluj, Romania on May 30, 2013:
There is no dogma that was not a historical event experienced by someone–afterward the dogma was formulated in the sense of teaching, philosophy, or however you would like, but everything begins with an experience. The uncreated light–well, Peter, Paul, and John saw Christ in that light with their eyes on Mount Tabor; and so all that is in the Church is lived experience, on a very intense level for those who experienced it at one time and was taught to us in a way that is accessible to all. Fasting? Fasting is something all of them did; they all needed to fast to reach where they were. What is fasting? It’s not fasting, it’s a regiment, and a very intelligent regiment. A French doctor told me, “know I understand, Fr. Rafail, how smart these fathers were. From the medical perspective, the fast before Pascha is brilliant; it’s exactly what we need then, when our metabolism changes, the organism changes between winter and summer, the digestive system is freed of all its heaviness and fats–exactly what is needed!” And I also observed that I would have like to fast more intensely, and if I didn’t reach it in Great Lent I would have wanted to in the Dormition Fast, but it was more difficult for me to fast during the Dormition Fast than in Great Lent. The Fathers knew something, and if you look at the entire rhythm of fasting; if you look at the whole liturgical architecture of the year, all these things that the Church has given us, they are of such a perfection, beauty, that you may not see it from the beginning, but it is a wonder to see that everything in the Church is experience. And an experience reduced to the level of any person, more or less healthy.
And my thought is that–and I will share this with you as my final word: the Church gave us everything at a level more or less accessible to everyone, but we must use the Church as a takeoff runway–fasting is completely different from what we know, well some of us–sadly not me–knew how to fast, but I am not talking about fasting as a performance, but a spiritual need–for now a very intelligent regiment, if we keep it intelligently, and we can learn this from young girls who want to preserve their silhouette, because even they are sometimes too zealous and exaggerate, but I want to say that they follow a diet intelligently because they seek something, and we too must learn to seek something, and pray to God to inspire us to see what, because what was in the Church was not the performance of some extraordinary people, but a need, and when we sing in Troparia, “asceticism higher than nature,” yes, but not performance. It was a need, because the Apostle Paul says the flesh craves against the spirit, and the Spirit craves against the flesh (cf. Gal 5:17), but so long as we live these things as a rule–that today it says we can eat fish, so we will eat fish, but tomorrow we are not allowed to, so a strict fast. So, good, a good rule, and if we do it intelligently, then it is very healthy, a very good rule, and we wouldn’t be, how do you say, obese, well I think it’s not only food that makes us fat, it’s also illnesses and genetics, but I mean to say that on the level of diet, of experience, these are all intelligently done, however, it is only a takeoff runway.
Much greater things would await us if we, like the Fathers, began to observe this, and this begins to be a person–a person is someone who smells the prey, so to speak. A dog is someone who runs in the woods. Why? Seeing this, other dogs may follow the same rule [order]: “let’s also run in the woods.” Yes, but the one who was running smelled the prey; he knew what he was pursuing, and so too did those people who fasted more or less harshly, or beyond human strength, but they knew what they were doing. We follow some rules, and let us follow them, because they are good, wise, but wisdom says each to his own measure, and here, oh spiritual fathers, the souls and bodies of many are in your hands. You don’t give an elderly person or a sick person the rule you would a young person for whom it would be beneficial, who is healthy enough to do X number of prostrations, and if he doesn’t do prostrations, doesn’t he do gymnastics, and how do you say? I don’t know, all sorts of things, bodily torture. And now in cities the gyms are full of what I call instruments of torture–bicycles that don’t go anywhere, things that work you until you huff and puff, sweat, and I don’t know what else. And people actually buy these things and torture themselves with them!
If we understood the rules of the Church, we wouldn’t need all these things. Anyway, I’m speaking generally, life is how it is, one person spends all his life in front of a computer–poor person–but I want to say in a general way that if people understood the Church, we wouldn’t need other things, however–and this is the word for this evening: runway. Other things await us and we need to understand: it is not true, and in general we live falsely by the expression “believe and do not search”--on the contrary! It must be searched. With understanding, with our liberty, we must reach–at first we are constrained, and we willingly let ourselves be constrained because we love the Church, we trust the Church, and we act with certain constraints (we look in the calendar to see if we can eat fish or not), but when we reach the point of experiencing more fully, of understanding more fully, of smelling the prey, then all these things begin to be a trampoline with which we do nothing other than leap into eternal things.
And may God help us all. Elder Sophrony would say “live like a human,” and what does “live like a human” mean? Pray. Each for the other, and one for one another and for all. And here I want to say that if you see that your neighbor sins or bothers you, upsets you, then try at the beginning, because it is an asceticism, not only to not get upset, but also to not judge, and to pray for the poor person. If you see a priest or spiritual father scandalize you, pray for him. If a bishop scandalizes you with something, pray for him. May each pray for all the members of the Church, and for the entire Church, and then we will become a different world.
Amazing! I never heard this before from Fr Rafail. I am one of those poor souls who sits all day in front of the computer...I need my runway!
What does he mean by “If we understood the rules of the Church, we wouldn’t need all these things.” Is he referring to the stationary bikes and instruments of torturous exercise?