THE ANCIENT PRACTICE OF FASTING

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

“Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?” - Joel 2:12-17

Introduction

Fasting in the Old Testament began as voluntary acts of humility, repentance, and seeking God, seen especially in figures such as Sts. Moses, David, Jonah and Daniel, who fasted in times of revelation, crisis, and intercession. It later became a communal and liturgical practice, particularly in national repentance and mourning, while the only explicit fast commanded in the Law was the Day of Atonement, linking fasting with atonement and covenant renewal. When the prophet Jonah proclaimed judgment, the people of Nineveh responded with a universal fast, expressing repentance in sackcloth, and God in mercy relented from the threatened destruction. The prophets deepened its meaning by teaching that true fasting requires justice, mercy, and inner conversion, preparing the way for the fuller spiritual discipline continued in the life of the Church (Exodus 34:28; Judges 20:26; 2 Samuel 12:16; Daniel 9:3; Leviticus 16:29–31; Zechariah 8:19; Isaiah 58, Jonah 3:5–10).

As the Prophet writes:

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free… Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry…?” (Isaiah 58:6–7)

Fasting in the Ancient Church is not a dietary system but an ascetical therapy, a practice of self-emptying (“kenosis”) that allows the medicine of God’s mercy to be poured into our spiritual wounds. It is the voluntary restraint of lawful pleasures for the sake of repentance, purification of the passions, and deeper participation in the Eucharistic life of Christ. Because of this, fasting is not meant for virtue-signaling, self-display, cultural identity, or ideological rigor; as our Lord teaches, “But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret” (Matthew 6:17–18). Its purpose is the healing of the soul and the restoration of the Imago Dei through grace.

Thus, our fasting is always oriented toward love, almsgiving, humility, and sacramental communion.

The Ancient Pattern

Scriptural and Patristic Foundation

The Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Axum, Edessa, Byzantium, Rome, Gaul, Britain, and Spain received fasting directly from Apostolic practice. The Didache speaks of weekly fasts; St. Leo the Great preaches on the "Ember Days" (short, three-day fasts that were the standard in the Early Church). Early councils regulated Lenten discipline, which has always tended to be either performative or legalistic. Nowhere in the early Western or Eastern corpus do we find a monastic typikon imposed universally upon the laity, and we see that local Churches all had different practices.

The Ancient Church fasts seriously, but always pastorally and without pharisaic grandstanding or self-congratulation.

Lent gradually developed from the practice of black fasting during Holy Week, gradually extending to forty days, and then to fifty days. It became more and more severe and penitential, and reminded both the clergy and the laity that "All have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23) Ember Days sanctified the passing of the seasons with short spurts of fasting. Rogation Days invoked mercy upon the land, calling to mind the Prophet Jonah and the repentance of the Ninevites. Vigils preceded major feasts. Abstinence from red meat was the most common form of fasting, while prohibiting dairy and oil was a variable and local form of fasting.

On the whole, ancient fasting practices were governed episcopally and conciliar, not through monastic absolutism. As our holy canonical tradition teaches, discipline must be interpreted through Scripture → Apostolic practice → Ecumenical councils → local reception → pastoral economia. We do not absolutize, but allow for each person to struggle towards holiness through self-denial to the extent that they can, always careful not to fall into the sin of comparison, self-righteousness, pride or hypocrisy. 

The Ancient Church preserves this conciliar elasticity and venerable practice. 

Cathedral Rather Than Monastic Standardization

Our calendrical fasts emerged from cathedral life, not just from desert enclosure. Parish, household, and monastery were distinguished states of life, all leading to salvation, and the fasts that were kept were equally holy if in the town or village, or the desert monastery. 

The monks embraced radical renunciation, remembering that they were subject to the same bishops and served the same humble village life as the layman. The married priest embraced pastoral moderation and enforced therapeutic fasting as a loving father or as a coach in the gymnasium, building stronger wills and bodies through incorporating moderate discipline. The lay faithful fasted according to ability, under direction of their spiritual fathers and mothers, without allowing grandstanding, shame, or an artificial view of monastic holiness to cloud their spiritual vision.

The goal was not dietary precision but the penitential conversion of the whole man.

The Byzantine Development

Monastic Ascetic Intensification

In the Byzantine East, especially after the Studite reforms and Athonite consolidations, the monastic typikon increasingly influenced universal practice, leading to a kind of legalism on one side, and also of symbolic fasting on the other, which mistook changing the quality of food for keeping a real fast. What was originally desert counsel gradually became normative expectation, and the folk practice of this form of fasting increasingly led to fat monastics and very strange Lenten abuses, that, while not really fasting from food or increasing prayer, Scripture reading, or good works of alms and help to the poor, were increasingly asteemed as "holy."

The Byzantine system developed intricate gradations:

Abstinence from meat
Abstinence from dairy
Abstinence from oil
Abstinence from wine
Strict xerophagy (only eating raw things) on certain days

This system, which may be beautiful within monastic life, was not originally intended as an inflexible standard for families and laborers and was an increasingly odious burden to bear by the poor, who, during the time of St. John Chrysostom, had been fed by the rich during the times of fasting in the Early Church. Over time, this strict and scrupulous enforcement by local clergy became one of the biggest reasons for Middle Eastern Christians to apostatize to Islam, or to convert to Roman Catholicism (which was less extreme and scrupulous), 

This has changed over the last few hundred years, and now economia governs parish life. Grandmothers do not feel compelled to consult the typika, and mothers do not try to make their babies abstain from milk. Instead, the modern Eastern understanding of fasting has come closer to the understanding of the Early Church, with sobriety and reverence, guided by priests who know the pastoral circumstances.

The Fathers consistently frame fasting as therapy. As St. Basil teaches, fasting is “medicine for the soul.” Medicine must be applied proportionately, and not as a "one size fits all" pharisaic practice.

Standardization After Trullo

The Quinisext Council (Trullo) contributed to Eastern standardization of certain disciplines, though even there application remained pastoral. The West did not receive Trullo as ecumenical, because several of its canons were at odds with the First and Fourth Ecumenical Council, and therefore maintained its earlier canonical flexibility. This divergence explains later contrasts, which was not doctrinal, but disciplinary.

Why the Our Pattern Is More Ancient in Form

We speak here not of moral superiority, but of historical precedence in the history of fasting.

The earliest centuries reveal:

• Weekly fasts (Wednesday and Friday) focused on black fasting a meal or two.
• A developing Lenten season that expanded from three days, to five days, to forty days and then to fifty days. 
• Local episcopal regulation that all reflect the local economy of grace, socio-economic factors, and divergent local interpretations of canons. 
• Variation among regions that reflected the reality of the human condition - Innuits cannot fast from meat, because they do not have vegetables, so they eat fish during Lent and try to skip meals on Wednesdays and Fridays. 
• Emphasis on repentance, not food taxonomy, so that we do not fall into the sins of ego, all while pretending to by holy and spiritually-minded. 

The Western tradition preserved this pre-typikon simplicity, and helps to correct the pharisaic abuses of those who fast based on a monastic cultural perception of holiness, rather than upon true self-emptying and humility. Our own catechetical inheritance emphasizes that Christian discipline serves theosis, not legalism. Thus, the Ancient Church of the West does not equate spiritual seriousness with dietary maximalism. It equates seriousness with 1) Confession, 2) Almsgiving, 3) Eucharistic preparation, and 4) Reconciliation. We must always remember that our fasts are medicinal, not ideological.

St. Gregory the Great Giving His Treatise on Fasting

An Ancient Liturgical Calendar, Fasts Shown as "Night Time" and Non-Fasting Seasons Shown as "Day Time"

Christ Delivering His Teaching on Fasting in an Ancient Manuscript

The Contemporary “Orthobro” Phenomenon

In recent decades, a digital subculture has arisen, often among zealous converts, that treats the most stringent monastic fasting patterns as markers of authenticity, and attempt to use fasting as a way to exert cult-like psychological control on others.

Several distortions appear in these young men's online videos and articles:

Monastic universalism, assuming the Athonite rule is normative for all.

Competitive asceticism, measuring holiness by strictness.

Online absolutism, removing fasting from parish context.

Identity politics of piety, using discipline as tribal signaling.

This mentality is historically naïve and culturally inexperienced, taking what is written to be universally true, when they are seen merely as guidelines to the faithful and not immutable law. They seem not to realize that Greek Yayas and Russian Babushkas know more about lived Orthodoxy than they do, and these pious old women take fasting seriously within the context of everyday life, fitting the fasting to what is helpful and transformative in their day-to-day existence. This reflects how the Ancient Church never imposed desert severity indiscriminately. To do so would violate the very canonical principle of economia. Our canonical theology reminds us that law is sacramental grammar, not juridical tyranny.

Ascetic pride is more dangerous than dietary indulgence. The lifting up of self and the harsh judgment of others, often excused by fasting praxis, is more damning that the most unhealthy and luxuriant of foods. When we allow our religion to excuse pride and self-aggrandizement, we are believing in the religion of Satan and the Demons, practicing the religion of the Scribes and Pharisees who crucified Christ. 

Summary

The history of fasting in the Scriptures and in the life of the Church shows that it was never intended to be a system of dietary precision or a cultural badge of identity, but a sacramental and ascetical means for sincere conversion. From Patriarch Moses on Sinai to the repentance of Nineveh, from the teaching of the Prophets to the practice of the Apostles, fasting has always been ordered toward humility, repentance, mercy, and the restoration of communion with God. The Ancient Church, of both East and West, preserved this therapeutic vision, governing with pastoral discipline and conciliarity, so that each believer might struggle according to ability, without falling into pride, despair, or comparison with others.

For this reason, the Ancient Church of the West calls the faithful not to external maximalism but to interior transformation: confession of sins, reconciliation with enemies, generosity to the poor, deeper prayer, and preparation for the Holy Eucharist. The goal of fasting is not the classification of foods but the purification of the heart, that the passions may be healed, the will strengthened, and the image of God renewed in us by His uncreated and deifying grace. In this way, fasting becomes an instrument of theosis, drawing the whole person into the life of Christ, who fasted for our salvation and who feeds us with His own Body and Blood.

Thus, in an age of both secular laxity and harsh and hypocritical rigor, the ancient pattern offers a path of wisdom, sobriety, and love. It resists both indifference and legalism, calling the Church to return to the evangelical fast praised by the Prophets and fulfilled in Christ: a fast joined to mercy, humility, and joy. By recovering this balance, the faithful may walk in the ancient paths with discernment, healing, and charity, and so bear witness to the world that true asceticism is not domination or display, but the quiet kenosis and katharsis through which the Kingdom of God is formed within the human heart.

COLLECT

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who didst appoint holy fasting as a medicine for the healing of our souls, and didst teach us by thy Prophets and Apostles that true abstinence is joined with mercy and humility: Grant us grace so to discipline our bodies that our hearts may be made lowly before thee; that, being freed from pride and vainglory, we may hunger only after righteousness and thirst for the living Bread which came down from heaven. Preserve thy Church from harsh judgment and from careless indifference; and give unto thy servants wisdom to walk in the ancient paths with charity and discretion; that our fasting may be acceptable in thy sight, and bring forth in us the fruits of repentance, compassion, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.