Hello all,
I just LOVE food, I don’t know why. The Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic fasting periods always tend to get rough for me, but I guess they do for everyone. For those of you who transitioned into Eastern Catholicism, or became Orthodox how did you get adjusted to it?
The advice is always to fast with the counsel of a spiritual father or mother for guidance. That said, I love the fact we have the rhythm of the fasting and feasting throughout the year. Still, it is a challenge as you say, and is meant to be. Our Church is serious about fasting, tho what each parishioner does varies greatly. Someone brought chicken last Sunday, which we could not serve, and said “I didn’t know we are in a fast.” We all get copies of our wall calendar every Dec. which clearly shows the current fast, it’s also on our parish website, on our parish Facebook, signs have been posted in our agape (lunch) area these past weeks, following our deacon having reminded us on the Sunday we began the Fast. LOL It did make me wonder how have we failed to help our parishioners who are Latin Church better find a connection to our fasting since they are active parishioners with us?
To your question, I personally try to talk with those in the parish and my Orthodox friends who
are following the fasting periods (plenty of Orthodox parishioners are not), to encourage each other. I pull out my many cookbooks and pour over them. Years ago I got one of those parish cookbooks from an Orthodox parish in which fasting compliant recipes were marked with a graphic of a cross in the margin next to the recipe. I have gone through my favorite cookbooks and marked the margins the same way, if a recipe follows the fast requirements, or is easily adapted to them (substitute vegetable broth for the chicken broth).
At the start of Great Lent and Advent, the longer fasts, we encourage people to bring in copies of their favorite recipes to share. This does get some enthusiasm going. Our previous priest, who was a wonderful cook, used to encourage us to eat shell fish which I still haven’t managed to incorporate into my meals.
Ancient Faith Radio has a lot of programs on fasting and I like to listen to these for support. Some of these programs are better than others. I was thrilled when I recently discovered that I can download these to my phone and listen to them anywhere.
It would seem that fasting within the Latin Rite is so lenient, compared to the Byzantine Rite. What does the average individual who is used to Western Christianity do?
Beginning with the traditional Wed. and Fri. abstaining of meat, fish, eggs, dairy, oil, wine is a good place to begin, along with the usual prayers, acts of charity and reading related reading.
