The Paschal Fast

"Beloved, even if the fasting is over, let the piety remain.  Even if the time of the holy quarantine has gone by, let us not put aside the memory of it.  Let no one feel displeasure as this exhortation; for I do not say it to impose on you another period of fasting, but because I wish you both to relax and to display now a more exact kind of fasting—but the true one.  For it is possible for one who is not fasting to fast.  How is this?  I shall tell you. While on the one hand we are taking food, let us, on the other, abstain from sin.  For this is the fasting which helps us, and it is with this fasting in view that we abstain from food, so that we may more easily run in the course of virtue.  Therefore, if we wish both to take proper care of the body and to keep the soul free from sin, let us take heed and act accordingly."
--St. John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions V.1 

St. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, pray for us!

 

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