don't worry.....holy week will be here really soon. lent comes and goes really fast......especially when your college. the best lent period i had were during high school which we didn't do anything in. we were in church almost everyday after school doing somthing.
Actually, I should qualify what I said, because it may be misconstrued. I was not making fun of the hermits. I was making fun of myself. Typing the previous post quickly, it may have sounded in the opposite fashion. They were two separate thoughts, separated by two separate paragraphs. Just a bad joke.
Not to shift the thread away from ilovesaintmark's brilliant jokes or anything, but thought I'd share HH's words of wisdom on fasting :)
SPIRITUAL FASTING
By H.H Pope Shenouda III
Lent is one of the oldest and most holy fasts of the year, where we remember the forty days fast of the Lord, to which we add the Passion Week, which is a treasure for the whole year. It is important to experience this fast as a spiritual period.
Therefore, we have to contemplate together the spirituality of the fast and train ourselves to practise it. Fasting is not just abstaining from food, this is just a means to
control the body in order to elevate the spirit. During fasting, do you completely control your body? Do you take interest in positive actions that help you grow spiritually?
As you deprive your body from food, do you give your spirit its food?...
Therefore fasting has always been connected with prayer, contemplation and other spiritual activities, such as reading, singing hymns, spiritual gatherings, spiritual exercises and judging oneself. As fasting is accompanied by prayer, it is also accompanied by repentance. Nineveh is such an example, with all the humility it
involved. There is also the fasting described by the prophet Joel (2:12-17). God is pleased with fasting in which sin is abandoned more than mortifying the body. We read about the fasting of the people of Nineveh, "Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it." (Jon 3: 10)
Fasting has also to be accompanied by acts of mercy. We act mercifully towards people so that God may have mercy upon us. We experience people's pain when we feel the hunger, so we have pity on those who are hungry and feed them...One of the best sayings of the Fathers about fasting is, "... if you do not have what to offer these saints then fast and offer them your food." This has been explained by the Prophet Isaiah (Chapter 58). Fasting is a period of forsaking material matters and whatever relates to them. Forsaking means having no concern about food, its types, cooking and arrangement, which would make the fast lose its spirituality and become a formality... The prophet Daniel said this beautiful saying during his fast, "I ate no pleasant food."
(Dan. 10:3) Forsaking food by abstaining from it and from its cravings is, in general, an evidence of asceticism because of the preoccupation of the heart with whatever is spiritual and beneficial for the eternal life...
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I have enough blubber built up to last me for 10 Lents.
SPIRITUAL FASTING
By H.H Pope Shenouda III
Lent is one of the oldest and most holy fasts of the year, where we remember the forty days fast of the Lord, to which we add the Passion Week, which is a treasure for the whole year. It is important to experience this fast as a spiritual period.
Therefore, we have to contemplate together the spirituality of the fast and train ourselves to practise it. Fasting is not just abstaining from food, this is just a means to
control the body in order to elevate the spirit. During fasting, do you completely control your body? Do you take interest in positive actions that help you grow spiritually?
As you deprive your body from food, do you give your spirit its food?...
Therefore fasting has always been connected with prayer, contemplation and other spiritual activities, such as reading, singing hymns, spiritual gatherings, spiritual exercises and judging oneself. As fasting is accompanied by prayer, it is also accompanied by repentance. Nineveh is such an example, with all the humility it
involved. There is also the fasting described by the prophet Joel (2:12-17). God is pleased with fasting in which sin is abandoned more than mortifying the body. We read about the fasting of the people of Nineveh,
"Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that he had said he would bring upon them, and he did not do it." (Jon 3: 10)
Fasting has also to be accompanied by acts of mercy. We act mercifully towards people so that God may have mercy upon us. We experience people's pain when we feel the hunger, so we have pity on those who are hungry and feed them...One of the best sayings of the Fathers about fasting is, "... if you do not have what to offer these saints then fast and offer them your food." This has been explained by the Prophet Isaiah (Chapter 58). Fasting is a period of forsaking material matters and whatever relates to them. Forsaking means having no concern about food, its types, cooking and arrangement, which would make the fast lose its spirituality and become a formality... The prophet Daniel said this beautiful saying during his fast, "I ate no pleasant food."
(Dan. 10:3) Forsaking food by abstaining from it and from its cravings is, in general, an evidence of asceticism because of the preoccupation of the heart with whatever is spiritual and beneficial for the eternal life...