The liturgical illumination of the common Christian feat of fasting in all its aspects is given primarily by the Lenten Triodion.

Their liturgical instructions, for fifteen hundred years, have taught and continue to teach Christians to truly fast.

Who among the Orthodox faithful from early childhood did not perceive in the Church the soul-shattering edification of the above-mentioned holy persons about the God-pleasing passage of the time of fasting?

From the honey-flowing speeches of the Lenten Triodion, let us first of all extract the concept of bodily fasting.

1. BODILY FASTING

Bodily fasting is far from indifferent in the spiritual life of every Christian. Randomly and indiscriminately eaten food often arouses passion [1], coarsens the sensitivity of the soul and interferes with prayer. Once upon a time, the forefathers of the human race, Adam and Eve, through the eating of the fruit forbidden by God, were deprived of God's grace and were expelled from paradise.

Those who seek to return to the bright heavenly abodes achieve it by abstaining from excesses in nutrition and pleasures of the flesh [2].

In liturgical language, the name of bodily fasting means abstinence from meat, milk, sweet foods, bodily voluptuousness, drunkenness, and other bodily sins and lusts [3]. A fasting person should eat even vegetable food in moderation in order to conquer bodily passions and avoid the power of the demon of gluttony [4].

The Lord, desiring our salvation, commanded us to constrict the belly and abandon the passions of the flesh, in order to make all the bodily members instruments of righteousness and to stop the carnal prodigal cries [5].

In order to subordinate the flesh to the spirit, a person must at times exhaust the flesh, humble the bodily passions, and vigorously and tirelessly resist them [6]. It is better to endure the struggle with the passions than to submit to them and then suffer from the slavery of carnal lust, like the biblical Samson, who clung to the Philistine Delilah [7].

Bodily fasting weakens the bodily lustful burning and flame and allows the spirit to dominate passion. A limited and light diet refines and humbles the flesh, extinguishes lust in it, and brings a person out of the state of servility to the belly. The fasting man girds up his loins with chastity, as if crucifying the members of the body with fasting, and dies of voluptuousness. He is pure to the Saviour, who seeks complete purity in people [8].

The joyful acceptance of the Lenten testament does not allow the larynx to be pleased with its favorite viands and wines, and obliges us to guard our sight, hearing, and tongue from sin. He who fasts with contempt for the sweets of earthly life tears himself away from sin and receives from the Savior the highest spiritually grace-filled consolations in His illumination of grace. Instead of idolizing the belly and lust, he hates gluttony and violent fornicatory incontinence [9]. Fasting, he follows the Saviour and enlightens his bodily movements by passion-killing.

Lenten food and quenching thirst with water do not drive any of the people to madness. On the contrary, intemperance in food and the use of wine make people enemies of the Lord's Cross. Thus, the intoxication of wine once exposed even the righteous Noah and plunged Lot into wandering [10].

Summarizing all of the above, we come to the following definition of bodily fasting: