Since we are in the season of fasting, I was very struck by what Saint Basil the Great said about fasting and prayer. This great saint is one of the most famous figures of the universal Church and the organizer of monastic life. (He was called “the Great” because he was great in his faith and his works, in his humility and his conduct. He worked and excelled, he thought and created, he believed and became a saint. He was great in his own time and has remained great through the centuries.)
He wrote a great deal, including doctrinal, ascetical and catechetical works. Here, in brief, is what he wrote about prayer: prayer has conditions for being answered. One is that what we ask must agree with God’s will. Jesus says: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”
Others are perseverance and persistence; God’s wish that we amend our lives before he answers; our being unworthy of what we ask, or the person we pray for being unworthy; or the fact that not being answered is better than being answered. But if all the conditions are met, there is no doubt that God answers our prayer.
Here Saint Basil teaches us how to pray so that our prayer is answered by God.
As for fasting, he said in one of his homilies: fasting began in Paradise, when the Lord said to Adam, “You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Our first parents were driven out of Paradise because they did not fast. So it is through fasting that we enter the Kingdom. You object to fasting and say: “My health cannot take it; I cannot give up eating and drinking completely.” But tell me, I beg you: what is the remedy some doctors prescribe for the sick?
Is it not abstaining from food and drink, or taking light, simple food? Be careful not to fast only from meat and think that this is all that is asked of you: true fasting is abstaining from every vice… Perhaps you do not eat meat, but you devour your brother’s flesh; you abstain from wine, but you do not rein in the burning desires that flare up in your soul… And by fasting I do not mean giving up necessary food, for that leads to death, but giving up food that gives us pleasure and makes the body rebel. A blessed continuation of the fast, my brothers and sisters, and may our works be constant prayer and praise to the Lord.
Prepared by Rita of the Sawt el Rab team
