True Fasting and Discerning Help

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

This 23rd Sunday after Pentecost could be an important day in our lives in which the Gospel and the Epistle can draw us closer to Christ. We also begin the Nativity Fast in which we fast for the next 40 days until Christmas. Let us begin with the Gospel about the Good Samaritan in the 10th chapter of the Gospel of St Luke. These readings from the Gospels and the Epistles can empower us to make decisions in our own lives.

In the Weekly Lectionary Guide for the first of November, Father Gregory reflected that: “Everything we do in our Christian lives, the attitudes and thoughts we cultivate must have their focus and goal in the love of God and of our neighbour.” He also noted that just as Jesus Christ told his disciples to reach out to the Jews first and only later to the Samaritans and Gentiles, so we too “may need to make similar decisions about those to whom we should reach out in the name of Christ.” I think making those decisions about reaching out to others in prayer and in action apply not only to evangelism but more broadly to helping others.

In the Gospel today a Samaritan is suddenly confronted with a decision. He sees a man beside the road—alive but clearly hurt and in need of help. Unlike two religious Jews who “have passed by on the other side,” this Samaritan makes a different decision. He stops and helps him. “He had compassion and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn and took care of him.” So it is for each of us. We can be the person who has been wounded in life or the person who passes by someone wounded or the person who helps someone who has been wounded. Sometimes, we can pick ourselves up from whatever wounds have come our way. At other times, we do need others to help us. Certainly, we need to help others, just as Christ has helped us to live with purpose and joy. However, we cannot help everyone to come to Christ, nor can we help everyone who has in some way been wounded. However, we can pray and learn to discern to whom we should reach out. Here, “to discern” means to separate those situations in which God wishes us to become involved from those situations where it is not appropriate for us to take action, although we can still pray. “To discern” also means to separate those situations in which we can pick ourselves up with God’s help from those situations where we need to recognise that we should seek help from others.

Of particular interest in this Gospel is that the key person who makes all the right decisions is a Samaritan, not a Jew. St John Chrysostom points out that the Samaritans had been sent from Babylon to Palestine and continued to worship their idols. St John Chrysostom preached, and I quote: “This [idol worship] was reported to the king, and he sent a certain priest to give them the laws of God. Nevertheless, not even then were they freed entirely from their impiety [that is, their worship of idols]. However, as time went on they turned away from idols and worshiped God. When things had reached this point, the Jews, finally returning [from exile in Babylon] … [treated] them as foreigners and enemies and named them ‘Samarians’ after the mountain [of Semer],” concluded St John.

Now, Jesus Christ certainly did not treat the Samaritans, especially Photini the Samaritan Woman at the well, as a foreigner or an enemy. He recognised that within that Samaritan woman, as within each of us, there were inclinations toward good and inclinations toward selfishness and pleasure. That is a continuing battle that started with Adam and Eve and continues today.  These forces for good as opposed to the inclination to look after oneself alone are especially important as we decide how to fast for the next 40 days.

St Augustine preached of how fasting can become, and I quote, “not the curbing of old passions but an opportunity for new pleasures. [So,] take measures in advance with as much diligence as possible to prevent these attitudes from creeping up on you. Let [calm reflection and prayer] be joined to fasting. As satisfying the stomach is to be censured, so stimulants of the appetite must be eliminated. It is not that certain kinds of food are to be detested but that bodily pleasure is to be checked,” concluded St Augustine.

Excellent—indeed profound—advice about the purposes of fasting comes from a twentieth- century Orthodox Serbian Saint, Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich in his book, Prayers from the Lake, and I quote: “Abstaining from food will not save me. Even if I were to eat only the sand from the lake, You [Lord] would not come to me, unless the fasting penetrated deeper into my soul…. I have brought fasting into my mind, so that it might [throw out] the world and prepare to receive Your Wisdom. And I have brought fasting into my heart, so that it might [overcome] all passions and worldly selfishness…. I prescribe fasting for my tongue, to break itself of the habit of idle chatter…. And I have imposed fasting on my worries so that it might blow them all away … like the wind that blows away the mist, lest they stand like a dense fog between me and You [Lord], and lest they turn my gaze back to the world…. And [fasting] has instilled in me courage, the likes of which I never knew when I was armed with every sort of worldly weapon,” concluded St Nikolai. That is quite a fast—reaching into the soul, the mind, the heart, the tongue and any worries—bringing courage. May it be so for each of us no matter how much food we choose to eat.

In Psalm 114 (116) verse 2 on how God “inclines His ear to us” St Basil the Great wrote, and I quote, “The divine ear [that hears us], indeed, does not need a voice for perception; it knows how to recognize in the movements of the heart what is sought…. The presence of good works is a loud voice before God,” concluded St Basil. We can be confident that the Lord heard the good works of this Samaritan, just as He hears our good works. However, as our epistle today from the second chapter of St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians reminds us, and I quote: “By grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your doing; it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” 

And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.              Father Emmanuel Kahn