"This effort to purify the passions needs to be carried out on the level of both soul and body. On the level of the soul they are purified through prayer, through the regular use of the sacraments of Confession and Communion, through daily reading of Scripture, through feeding our mind with the thought of what is good, through practical acts of loving service to others. On the level of the body they are purified above all through fasting and abstinence, and through frequent prostrations during time of prayer. Knowing that man is not an angel but a unity of body and soul, the Orthodox Church insists upon the spiritual value of bodily fasting. We do not fast because there is anything in itself unclean about the act of eating and drinking. Food and drink are, on the contrary, God's gift, from which we are to partake with enjoyment and gratitude. We fast, not because we despise the divine gift, but so as to make ourselves aware that it is indeed a gift -- so as to purify our eating and drinking, and to make them, no longer a concession to greed, but a sacrament and means of communion with the Giver. Understood in this way, ascetic fasting is directed not against the body but against the flesh (p. 61). Its aim is not destructively to weaken the body, but creatively to render the body more spiritual." Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 116.
The Fasting Rule Of The Orthodox Church
www.abbamoses.com/fasting.html
Food, Faith, And Fasting - A Podcast By Rita Madden
"Ancient Ingredients For Modern-Day Health"
www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/foodfaithfasting
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