HOMILY ON THE JOY AND REMEDY OF THE GREAT FAST By Saint John Chrysostomos

 

HOMILY ON THE JOY AND REMEDY

OF THE GREAT FAST

By Saint John Chrysostomos

{PARAPHRASED AND ABRIDGED}

The announcement of Lent is to be welcomed with joy, because it is a remedy for the ills of our souls. In the midst of intemperance, that brought sin and death into the world, fasting and abstinence produces an infinity of goods. The salutary influence of fasting, over the fatal consequences of intemperance finds me overflowing with joy and gladness when I see the crowd of the faithful fill the Church of God, and I praise the pious eagerness which gathers you. Jesus Christ himself fasted for forty days, and it was at his imitation that the Church has adopted this number in Holy and Great Lent.

So, the flourishing of your rewards is a sure sign of the satisfaction of your souls: for the Sage Solomon has said that the joy of the heart shines on the face. (Prov. XV, 13.) This is why I myself am full of enthusiasm to take part in the spiritual joy of all of you, and to announce the return of this holy quarantine which brings us the healing of the evils of soul. And indeed, the Lord, as a good Father, desires nothing so much as to forgive us our old faults; and that is why He offers us in the holy Lent the easy atonement. Let no one be sad and sorrowful. Let everyone, full of joy and gladness, celebrate the divine physician of our souls who opens this way of salvation to us, and welcome the announcement of these blessed days. Let non-believers see what zeal breaks out among us at the approach of Lent, that they may know it by their own experience what they see in us. The Church of God practices the virtues. She loves fasting, and seeks the healthful results of abstinence opposed to the vices of those who celebrate it as a “holiday”, spending it in excess at the table. These are not holidays but the days when one is occupied with the salvation of one's life, and where peace and harmony reign; days when we cut off almost all the preoccupations of life, the demands of the desires, the noise of carnal attachments, the tumult of the entertainment and the eagerness of the cooks. But now, at this time of Great Lent, we choose repose and calm, love and joy, peace and gentleness and all the innumerable goods that Lent promises us!

Suffer, my dear brothers, that I say a few words to you. And first of all I pray you to receive my word with kindness, so that you may bring fruit of happiness and the fullness of joy, which is Christ, to your houses. We have not gathered here in Great Lent at random. I speak to you, I applaud you, and then I withdraw; I have come to give you a word useful to your salvation, so that you do not leave this temple without having gathered from my mouth important and salutary instructions. The Church is the treasure of the remedies of the soul; and those who come to Her must not retire until they have received the remedies which suit their ills and applied them to their wounds. So St. Paul tells us that it is not those who listen to the law who are just in the sight of God; but that it is those who practice it that will be justified. (Romans 2:13) And the Savior Himself speaks to us in his Gospel: All who say to me, Lord, Lord, shall not enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (St. Matthew VII, 21.) Therefore, my beloved, since you know that the hearing of the holy word is only really useful as long as it translates into a bridal gown. Do not simply confine yourself to listening to it, but make it the rule of your conduct. Deploy all the benevolence of your soul to hear what I have to say about fasting. The fiancé who is to marry a chaste and modest virgin adorns his house with rich furnishings; he establishes order and cleanliness, and he drives out licentious and immodest servants; only then does he introduce his wife into the nuptial chamber; and in the same way, I would like you, jealous of purifying your souls, to say goodbye to the delights of the table and to the intemperance of feasts, and to reserve a kindly welcome for fasting, for it is for us the source and the principle of all the goods, no less than the school of love and all virtues. Start it with more joy to obtain more beneficial fruits. The doctor prescribes a severe diet as preparation for energetic purgation; He wishes thus that the strength of the remedy is not irritated by any obstacle and that it acts with complete efficiency. Is it not still more necessary to purify our souls by an exact sobriety, so that fasting produces in us all its salutary effects and that intemperance does not make us lose the happy fruits?

And in fact, just as excess entails for man an infinity of evils, fasting and abstinence produce for him an infinity of goods. So from the beginning God made a precept to the first man, for he knew that this remedy was necessary for the salvation of his soul. You can eat, he tells him, of all the fruits of the garden; but do not eat the fruit of the tree of the science of good and evil. (Gen. II, 16.) Now, to say eat this, and do not eat it, was it not the law of fasting? Alas! Adam, who should have kept this precept, transgressed Him; he was overcome by the vice of intemperance, and because of his disobedience, fated to death. The demon, that wicked spirit, and man's enemy, could not see without envy that in our earthly paradise our first parents lived a happy life, and that in a mortal body they preserved an angelic innocence. That is why he tried to make him fall from this happy state, and by promising him still more excellent goods, he stripped him of those he possessed.

You see then, my dear brethren, how at the beginning of time intemperance brought death; and now I call your attention to these two passages of Holy Scripture, where it judges pleasures and good food. The people sat down to eat and drink and all rose to dance. The beloved people drank and ate; appeased, satiated, intoxicated, they abandoned the God their Creator. (Exodus XXXII, 6, Deut. XXXII, 15.) It was also by these same excesses, together with their other crimes, that the inhabitants of Sodom drew upon them the vengeance of the Lord. For the Prophet expressly says that the iniquity of Sodom was the intemperance and pleasures of the flesh. (Ezek. XVI, 49.) This vice is therefore the source, and the root of all evils.

But to these fatal consequences of intemperance we oppose the happy results of fasting: After a fast of forty days, Moses deserved to receive the tables of the law, but as he lives, descending from the mountain, the sacrileges of the iniquities of the people. He threw down and smashed those same tables which had cost him so much effort and privation, for it seemed to him absurd that a voracious and voluptuous people should receive divine legislation, and so this admirable prophet needed to fast. Again, forty days, to receive again and bring those same tables which he had broken as a punishment for the crimes of the people. It was by a similar fast that the great Elijah was able to escape the tyranny of death. To heaven in a chariot of fire, even today he is alive, and Daniel, the man of desire, saw his long fasts rewarded by admirable revelations, and changed the ferocity of the lions into the sweetness of the lambs. Doubtless he did not destroy in them the instinct of nature, but he suspended its voracity. Finally, the Ninevites disarmed the vengeance of the Lord with rigorous fasting, they subjugated animals as well as men, and each one leaving his evil ways, they experienced the effects of divine mercy.

But it is useless to multiply here the examples of the servants: and how many features would not give me the Old and the New Testament! It is better to stop at the very person of our common Master. Now the divine Savior Jesus wanted to fast for forty days in order to prepare Him for temptation, and to teach us by His example that we must be like Him, to arm us with fasting, and to draw from it the forces necessary to fight victoriously against the devil. But here perhaps some good spirit, or some deep reasoner will ask me why the Master has fasted exactly the same number of days as the servants, and why he did not want to exceed this number? I answer them that this conduct, far from being useless and reckless, is full of wisdom and ineffable mercy. He wanted to fast to show that his body was real and not fantastic; and he wanted to confine Himself to forty days of fasting to prove that His flesh was like ours. Thus, in advance, He refuted the insolence of these curious and disputant minds. And indeed, if, in spite of this disposition of things and facts, some raise such objections, what would they not say if the Savior had not cut short all the pretexts of their unbelief? Yes, He has fasted exactly the same number of days as his servants, to convince us that He clothed himself with a flesh very similar to ours and that he was no stranger to our nature.

And now, when I have shown you the excellence and the usefulness of fasting, and I have set before you the example of the Divine Master and his servants, I beseech you, my dear brethren, do not neglect the great advantages attached to it. Do not sadly welcome the return of these days of salvation, but rejoice, and be full of joy, because, according to the word of the Apostle, the weaker the man outside, the more the man interior is renewed. (II Corinthians IV, 16.) Fasting is indeed like the food of the soul; and as the dishes of our tables maintain the health of the body, the fast communicates to the soul a new vigor. He gives it as two light wings that raise it, far from the horizon of the earth, to the contemplation of the most sublime mysteries. And it is then that this soul hovers above the pleasures of this life, and all the pleasures of the senses. We see again that a light skiff easily cruises the waves, while an overloaded vessel perishes by its own weight. Thus the fast that alleviates the spirit makes it more agile to cross the sea of ​​this world. Our eyes are turned to heaven and the things of heaven, and our thoughts despise the goods of the earth which appear to us only a shadow and a dream. On the contrary, drunkenness and intemperance burden the mind by overloading the body. They make the soul captivate the senses, press it on all sides, and deprive it of the free exercise of judgment and reason. So this soul goes astray here and there through precipices, and runs infallibly to its ruin.

Wherefore, my dear brethren, let us enter with holy ardor into the salutary practice of fasting; and since we are not unaware of the evils which intemperance produces, let us flee the fatal consequences. No doubt the Gospel, which prescribes a more refined morality, which proposes to us a more difficult struggle and greater fatigue, and which promises us a more beautiful reward and a more brilliant crown, strictly forbids us the excesses of the table. But the ancient law itself also forbade intemperance, and yet the Jews still saw all things in figures, and waited for true light. They were like young children fed milk. Perhaps you will accuse me of speaking thus at random, and without proof; Listen, then, to the prophet Amos: Woe to you who are reserved for the evil day, who sleep on ivory beds and lie down softly on your couch, who eat the chosen lambs and the fattest heifers, who drink the wines the more delicate, and you perfume the most exquisite essences, and consider these pleasures as a stable and permanent good, and not as a fugitive dream! (Amos, VI, 3-6.) This harsh language the Prophet uttered to the Jews, a rude, ungrateful people, and daily devoted to the pleasures of the senses. It is not useless either to weigh the expressions he uses, and to observe that after reproaching them with their inclination to drunkenness and debauchery, he adds that they considered these pleasures an unchanging good, permanent, and not as a fugitive dream. Is it not to warn us that these pleasures stop at the throat, and merely flatter the palate? The pleasure is short and momentary, but the pain it causes is long and lasting. And yet, says the Prophet, in spite of the lessons of experience, the Jews stubbornly regarded pleasure as an unchanging good, permanent, while it is only a fleeting enjoyment. Yes, the pleasure flies away quickly, and we cannot fix it even a few moments. For such is the destiny of human and sensible things, i.e. of the senses. Hardly do we possess them that they immediately escape us. Such is also the nature of the delights, the glory of the world, the power, the riches, and the prosperity of life. They offer us nothing solid or assured; nothing fixed or permanent. They flow more rapidly than the water of the rivers, and leave empty and destitute all those who seek them with so eager eagerness. But on the contrary, spiritual goods present us with a very different character. They are firm, assured, constant and eternal. Would it not be a strange folly to exchange a passing pleasure for immutable goods, for momentary pleasures against immortal happiness, and frivolous and rapid pleasures against a true and eternal happiness? Finally, some expose us to the dreadful torments of hell, while the others will make us supremely happy in the sky.

Thus, my dear brothers, these truths, seriously pondered, cause our salvation to be given all our attention, to despise the pleasures of the senses, vain and dangerous pleasures, and to joyfully embrace fasting and its salutary practices. Let us show in all our conduct that we are truly changed, and let us hasten to multiply our good works every day. Thus, after having, during the holy season of Lent, enlarged our spiritual riches, and increased the treasure of our merits, we will happily attain the holy day of the Lord. In this day we will be able to sit down with confidence at the formidable table of the divine banquet, to participate in it with a pure awareness of ineffable delights, and to receive the eternal goods and abundant graces that the Lord has prepared for us.

May we obtain this grace by the prayers and the intercession of the saints who have pleased themselves before Jesus Christ our Divine Savior, to whom be, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the glory, the empire and honor, now, and for ever and ever! - So be it.