I must die before I die

I must die before I die, so that when I die, I will not die. — heard from a Greek Orthodox priest.

We are about to enter the season of Great Lent again. We are about to begin the Great Fast again. We are beginning a period of mortifying our flesh in multiple ways so that we might have life. Saint Paul says in Romans 8:13, “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.” But, if we are going to again mortify the flesh, it is important to understand what we are doing and what we are not doing. Otherwise, all our striving may very well be in vain.

First, here is what we are not doing. We are not punishing our flesh for being bad. We are not punishing ourselves for having sin so that we can pay for our many sins. We are not earning our salvation by engaging in works. In fact, we have a warning from over twenty-five hundred years ago about a wrong idea of what we are accomplishing by fasting. The Prophet Isaiah warns us in chapter 58 of his book:

‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not seen?
Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?’ …

“Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’

There is a parallel to this passage in the Gospels, when Our Lord Jesus is speaking in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter 25:

Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’

“Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Fasting has never been about punishing ourselves to gain God’s favor, even from way back the Old Testament. So, uhm, why exactly are we fasting? One of the big purposes for fasting is about learning self-control. Let’s face it, impulse control is certainly one of the things that the human race needs to learn, ever since the impulse decisions by Adam and Eve! Fasting, in and of itself, is not a great thing. Rather, fasting gives us the opportunity to begin to say, “no!” to one of our impulses. The impulse to eat is deeply built into us as part of self-preservation. By fasting, we begin to resist that impulse and we begin to tell our flesh that it does not have ultimate control over us. We begin to win the first of many victories over our broken and damaged selves. Learning to fast is the beginning of self-control. Saint Peter tells us:

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

You see, self-control leads us to perseverance then to godliness then to brotherly kindness, then finally to true and godly love. This is why both the Prophet Isaiah and Our Lord Jesus speak of service to those in need as the mark of someone who has been working on impulse control. Self-control does lead to brotherly kindness. So, if you are properly fasting, properly learning to control your impulses, you will inevitably end up doing for others. Those who learn self-control of their body through fasting also learn to not allow possessions to control them and are able to give them away, in an appropriate fashion, to those in need. So, those who mistreat their employees, those who never care about the poor, those who never minister to strangers, have obviously never learned the lesson of fasting. The people argued with God that they had, “afflicted their souls,” a very spiritual argument. But God answers that if there is no visible practical result, which God defines as looking outward toward your neighbor, then the fasting has been done for mistaken reasons, and there is no true spirituality.

It is not surprising that brotherly kindness leads to love, to God’s love. Once you gain controls of your impulses (even if not perfectly) and once you lose your hold on money (it is hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven) and once you overflow with love for others, it is not the least surprising that you start entering into union with God. Faith in God is simply the beginning of a process which is fertilized by fasting and giving to others and which leads to union with God.

As an aside, it is also not surprising that the person who carries out the true fast is able to cast out those difficult demons that only come out by prayer and fasting. The person who is drawing closer to God, who passes through fasting to brotherly kindness, etc., is a person over whom the world, the flesh, and the devil have less and less power. Moreover, our God dwells with those who are lowly and humble of heart. Thus that person who fasts is not only less subject to Satan but is also more open to God and his Holy Spirit. A demon has no power over that person, rather that person has power over any demon.

So, you see, in order to not die later, you must start to die now. Is that not what happens when we fast? When our bodies do not get all the food they want, is that not the beginning of a little death? When we give some of our belongings to others, when we submit to one another in brotherly/sisterly love, are we not dying to our desires to have, to accumulate, to be greedy? We begin with fasting, but we end with the Kingdom of Heaven.