Fasting benefits us in many different ways: through
our minds, our feelings, our bodies, and it also controls our desires.
Fasting concentrates our minds on God. During
a fasting period we eat only vegetarian food, but is that enough
to be considered in a fasting state? What about our minds and
what we are thinking? We could be thinking bad thoughts. The thing
is to rid ourselves of thinking about sinning and fasting helps
us to concentrate more on placing our minds with God totally.
Feelings are one of the main parts in why we fast.
Fasting takes our feelings to the homeless people, and the
very poor people who cannot eat dairy. As we know dairy products are
very nutritious. So it is more expensive and the poor may not can
afford it. We fast so that we can feel how those homeless and
poor people feel when they look at such tasty and good looking food
and they can't even taste it. So our feelings for others is one of
the big parts of fasting.
We don't need meat and eggs and milk and these kinds
of foods to live. As Jesus said, "I am the Bread of Life: he that
cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall
never thirst"(John 6:35)
Fasting also cleanses our bodies. What does that
mean? It means it helps to keep us from sinning. It can purify our
bodies. It takes us away from the earthly to a place away from the
human desires. We must practice to clean, or purify our bodies from
sins.
Another big part of fasting is controlling our
desires. Not only food, but also many other things, like eating certain
food, going to certain places, or even sexuality. What kinds of desires
do we have?
Why not have desires like praying and talking to God,
who has been crucified and hurt and his blood was like streams? Why
can't we have desires to take friends and family to Church and listen
to the Divine Liturgy and partake of the Holy Communion? These are
all very nice desires. And all of that can be done with the help of
fasting.
Being a vegetarian for a certain period of time is part
of what fasting is, but it is not complete fasting. In order
for fasting to be complete we have to be living with God. Praying
is definitely the other half of fasting. When a person is in
tribulation that person say I must FAST and PRAY in
order to get out of this tribulation. Praying is talking to God, and
fasting is humility when they combine they form a pure son
of God. THESE ARE THE TRUE AND PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF FASTING.
