Fasting for Vocations

We are now in the midst of the Apostles Fast. Several years ago, when my sister was first learning about the Byzantine tradition – we didn’t grow up in this tradition, you see – she asked me what this fast is all about and, because I didn’t really know, I said, “Well, we’re Byzantine and Byzantines love to fast. You might as well ask why we’re not fasting at any given time as why we are fasting.”

And that really is true. Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov, in his excellent article titled “Fasting for Non-Monastics,” which I recommend you all read, estimates that there are approximately 250 fasting days each year in our calendar. That’s more than half the year! Now, this varies depending on how you interpret the Typikon (I count closer to 190 days) and it varies quite a bit from year to year – mainly because of this fast – the Apostles Fast – which is a different length each year. It can be anywhere from two to six weeks in length. But my answer to my sister – that we fast because we love to fast and because it is good to fast – is really insufficient, I think, even if it is true. I mean, I want there to be something that makes this fast distinctly meaningful. And I believe there can be.

Historically, I am told, this fast developed to give those who were unable to fast during the Great Fast for various reasons – such as pregnancy or illness – an opportunity to fast. It’s sort of like summer school – a chance to catch up with those who may have gotten ahead of us last semester. But I also find this to be an insufficient reason for us all to continue observing this fast year after year – even those of us who did keep the Great Fast.

We call this the Apostles Fast simply because we fast until the great feast of the Holy and Preeminent Apostles Peter and Paul on June 29th. However, perhaps it is also meaningful that the first Sunday of this Apostles Fast, which is always the Second Sunday after Pentecost, we always read about the calling of the first apostles: Simon, who would become Peter, and Andrew, his brother, and then James and John, the sons of Zebedee. This fast, it would seem, from its movable beginning until its fixed end, is apostolic in its liturgical focus. And, indeed, we have much to learn from the apostles about ascetic practices like fasting and their role in our vocations.

Calling of Peter and Andrew
by Duccio di Buoninsegna
between 1308 and 1311
tempera on wood

Today, Andrew and Peter and James and John show us how to respond to vocation: immediately they leave behind everything they have – those fishing nets and boats were their livelihood – and they follow Jesus (Matt 4:20, 22). This is a pure ascetic act – an act of self-denial.

One thing that fasting can help teach us is detachment from the things of this world. Let us not be enslaved to a small sack of flesh[i] in our bellies. Then perhaps we will not even be enslaved to our employers, for example, or to any power in this world, even if it is our livelihood, but we will be free and ready to respond to the call of Jesus Christ in our lives when we hear it. If we train in this way (which is what the word askesis originally meant – training or exercise) during this Apostles Fast, we will be more ready, like the first apostles, to respond immediately, to immediately walk away from whatever worldly attachments we have accrued, and to follow our Lord wherever he goes, even to the cross, through which is everlasting life.

Peter immediately leaves everything to follow Jesus, but he did not always follow through. Just before Jesus was to be delivered up to death, Peter said that he would follow Jesus, even to death. “I will lay down my life for you,” he says to Jesus (John 13:37). These are good words, but when death is truly imminent, when Jesus is arrested and suffers imprisonment, lies, interrogation, spit, and beatings, Peter reveals his weakness – a weakness many of us share. His earlier words were only so much bravado and three times he denied even knowing Christ, let alone being his disciple and apostle.

This is not Peter’s finest hour. But it is an hour that many of us can relate to. Sad to say, I’ve heard lies come out of my own mouth before – merely to avoid an awkward situation regarding trivialities, let alone to avoid torture and death. Lord, have mercy on me the sinner. Perhaps the lies of my mouth have not been so weighty as Peter’s lie about not knowing Jesus, but what we practice in small things become the habits that inform our large decisions and responses. So, again, it is important to fast so that we are well-trained not to give in to our every impulse, but to watch carefully and discern in our hearts whether they are from the Lord or our passions or the demons.

After Peter’s denial will come his repentance and in this he is once again a good model for us during the Apostles Fast, which is a season of repentance. After his denial of Christ, Peter hears the rooster crow and he remembers that the Lord predicted his denial before the crowing and then he weeps bitterly (Matt 26; Luke 22). In the Greek prayer of absolution after the confession of sins, the priest recalls, “The Lord forgave Peter his denial when he wept bitterly.” Repentance and confession of our sins during this Apostles Fast and each of the four fasts is an essential part of our tradition and it is an essential part of our vocations, inasmuch as each of us are sinners and at times fail to follow the Lord wherever he goes.

We do all have a vocation, each and every one of us is called by the Lord, just as Peter and Andrew and James and John are called by the Lord today. We are not all called to be apostles, of course, but we are all called by Christ to a life in Christ. It will take its own shape as he intends for us and as is best for us. Whatever shape our vocation takes, the fasting, prayer, and repentance that we emphasize during this Apostles Fast are necessary tools for walking the narrow way he calls us to.

The word “vocations” is often bandied about, misused, and over-specialized. When people talk about vocations – we need to pray for vocations, they say, or, the Church is suffering from a vocations crisis, you will sometimes hear – they are often actually talking only about vocations to the priesthood.

Sadly, the vocations crisis extends well behind the priesthood. There should be more deacons than there are priests, if you ask me, and the opposite is the case. There’s a long-lasting crisis in the vocation to the diaconate. I’ve only been a priest for a few years, but it is still disturbing that in this time I have celebrated only one baptism and only one crowning in marriage. There is a crisis in the vocation to marriage and even to the life in Christ.

It’s an error to say that there is a shortage of vocations. That would imply that God is not calling – that God is not doing his job, not holding up his end of the deal and, frankly, I find that a blasphemous suggestion. God is calling to the priesthood, to the diaconate, to the monastic life, to marriage, but we are not responding. We are not answering God’s call. We are not immediately leaving behind our nets – our earthly toils and vain anxieties – and following him wherever he goes.

One reason so many of us are ignoring the call of the Lord is that we have failed to train to be at the ready to respond to his call by a life a prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance. We’re not taking this seriously, when in fact there is nothing more important. Our priorities are out of whack. We seek immediate comfort rather than everlasting life. Let us take this Apostles Fast as an opportunity to reverse these tendencies in our lives.

Our Lord is saying to us all, “Come, follow me.” Let us train and ready ourselves like soldiers at attention to respond to that call.

[i] “If you cannot be in control of your stomach, if this simple sack of flesh is the ruler your life, how can you hope to be in control of more complex physiology, or your mind, or your soul?!” (Sveshnikov)

Unknown Saints

When I was an art student in college, I was particularly fascinated by medieval art and iconography. And I spent a lot of time poring over books of medieval art. The art of this time, in my opinion, expresses the spiritual reality more effectively than what would come later beginning in the Renaissance, which, with its classicism and humanism began to exalt the merely human over the divine. That’s a controversial opinion in the western world, which tends to look more favorably upon the works of Michelangelo and Da Vinci then it does upon the unknown artisans of the centuries before them.

Right there is highlighted a cultural difference between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. For the most part, the artisans of the Middle Ages are, as I say, unknown. It is in the Renaissance that the personality of the artist becomes exalted above the subject they are portraying in their art. When art historians are commenting on David or the Mona Lisa, they often have a lot more to say about Michelangelo and DA Vinci than they do about David or the Mona Lisa. The anonymity of most artists before this makes that kind of analysis impossible.

To this very day, iconography is traditionally left unsigned. Though, that tradition is unfortunately beginning to wane. The humility before the subject we portray is an act of veneration. How can I paint an icon of the Theotokos – and then sign my name to it? As if to call attention to myself rather than to my subject who is, in this case, “more honorable than the cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim”?

And so, perhaps understanding this, (though I am well aware of other economic and cultural forces at play, including the higher value given to the patron then to the artisan at the time), the artists and iconographers usually remained anonymous in the Middle Ages.

The anonymous iconographer is not concerned with exalting himself, but with exalting Christ; with acknowledging Christ before all; with loving Christ even more than himself (cf. Matt 10:32, 37). I think, if we are to become saints, which is what our Lord calls us to and makes us for, we can learn something from this idea of the anonymous iconographer. That is, we can focus our efforts not on calling attention to our own good work, but, by our good work, we can call attention to Christ – with both words and deeds. And we can focus on him rather than on ourselves. In fact, we will find our true selves in Christ. If we acknowledge him before all others, he will acknowledge us before his Father, he assures us today (Matt 10:32).

Preferring to acknowledge Christ rather than themselves, the medieval iconographers were intentionally anonymous, but another kind of anonymity also soon captivated me as I pored over those medieval art books. Medieval art is, as you know, very old. As a result, a lot of it is in significantly damaged condition. And a lot of it is decontextualized from having been moved around through various collections and its provenance is lost. For these reasons, and simply due to centuries of forgetting, sometime not only the artist, but also the subject is unknown. And so, quite often, one finds in books of medieval art a beautiful picture filled with images of saints. They’re clearly saints, being haloed figures in a medieval Christian artwork, but it is no longer clear who they are, specifically, if it ever was. Very often, in the description of the image, it will read something like, “Christ with the Virgin and John the Baptist and four unknown Saints.” Or, even just, “unknown saint.”

An Archangel and Three Unknown Saints

I love these figures. Often on the periphery of a scene filled with greater and better-known figures, they are saints too, but they are unknown saints. Personally, these unknown saints have become for me representative of all the saints we do not know by name. The saints who lived and worked and died for Christ in obscurity, which, I believe, is most saints. And today, we venerate them all.

I love to commemorate all the saints in a general way, as we do on this final Sunday of the Pentecostarion, the Sunday of All Saints, because it gives us the opportunity to remember in some way even the unremembered holy ones. Every day of the year, the Church lifts up a long list of saints we do know by name. These holy men and women are presented to us as inspiring examples of life in Christ worthy of our imitation. Yet, at the same time, it seems to me that most Catholic and Orthodox Christians I know hold in their hearts a saint they knew personally – often a member of their own family – who is perhaps not likely to be raised to the altars of the Church for public veneration. Most saints, it seems to me, are unsung, except on this day, on which we “celebrate a solemn feast of all those who from the ages have found grace before God.”

The unknown saints should encourage us in our own vocation, which is our own path to holiness and union with God. Because, like them, most of us are not prominent or famous or likely to be. Most of us will not be glorified in the churches with our own feast days or any such thing. Does this mean that we are not saints? Or that we are not called to sanctity? God forbid that we should fail to understand that we are created for holiness and union with God. And that this is attainable to us by his grace. I dare say that fame and prominence actually diminish our prospects of sanctity. Our relative obscurity is an opportunity to grow in humility. Of course, obscurity alone will not make us holy, but it is a helpful gift and not an impediment.

We are known to God. And there are no saints unknown to God. He knows them all. And to be known by God is all that matters. It is of no significance whether or not we are remembered by the world. To be remembered by God is to be remembered eternally and to live forever in him. Thus we pray for all those who have died in Christ, that the Lord God remember them forever. And for them we sing, “eternal memory.” This is nothing less than a prayer that God make them saints. Perhaps we don’t know what a saint is. A saint is holy person, made holy by grace, and eternally alive in Christ

How then can we access this grace and become holy and live forever? I can think of no greater grace than to be acknowledged by Jesus Christ before his Father. And he tells us today that, if we acknowledge him before others, he will acknowledge us before his Father. Evangelization, then, is mandatory for our salvation, then. It can take many forms, but it must take some form in our lives if we are to be acknowledged before the father.

But what if we have denied him? All of us who are sinners have denied him in some sense. He says that if we have denied him before others, he will deny us before his Father. Those are sharp words we need to hear. But if you have denied Christ, do not despair. “He forgave Peter his denial when he wept bitterly.” The Lord is kind and merciful and eager to forgive those who repent.

Beginning this evening, this repentance of Peter is our model of repentance. Tonight, we begin the Apostles Fast in preparation for the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul on June 29th. It has come to my attention that some of us do not even know about this fast. This is one of four seasons of repentance in our Church and it is not to be neglected by us. Our Church imposes no mandatory means of observing this fast, but neither does it permit us to ignore it. It is given to us as a season of repentance, which we all sorely need in our lives. Repentance is a way of life and not a momentary act.

Let us take this opportunity to increase in our lives the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. To do no fasting at all during this season is unacceptable. Neither is it acceptable to fast perfectly while continuing in our sins. St. Ambrose of Optina instructs us, “People have to answer greatly for not keeping… the fasts…. They repent and consider themselves sinners in every other respect, but they do not think to repent about not keeping the fasts.”

Meanwhile, St. Basil the Great observes,

Beware of limiting the good of fasting to mere abstinence from meats. Real fasting is alienation from evil. ‘Loose the bands of wickedness.’ Forgive your neighbor the mischief he has done you. Forgive him his trespasses against you…. You do not devour flesh, but you devour your brother. You abstain from wine, but you indulge in outrages. You wait for evening before you take food, but you spend the day in the law courts. Woe to those who are ‘drunken, but not with wine.’ Anger is the intoxication of the soul, and makes it out of its wits like wine.

Take heart. We all have much work to do, and this is an opportunity for us to do it together as a Church helping one another to grow in holiness and become saints, known to God alone perhaps, but saints nonetheless.