NOTES for Isa 58:9-14

This chapter can be reread again and again during any fast, and it is unlikely ever to lose its relevance. Indeed, how convenient it is to give the Lord just a little—to limit our food preferences for a while, say, and leave it at that. Yet the Lord asks us to give Him our hearts, asks that we belong to Him completely. He asks not because He wants to take everything from us and claim it for Himself, but because one who loves desires complete union with the beloved.

If we are not ready to open ourselves to His love, we will manage to drain even our care for the needy, the hungry and the oppressed of all vitality, or turn it into a charitable formality, something done just to tick a box. But if we are ready, the desire to help our neighbour will become an expression of love that seeks an outlet and longs to give of itself, and will take shape in real deeds. And who knows? Might even the little we can give Him then prove significant, like the poor widow's mite?

We are used to thinking of fasting as a different kind of time: there is ordinary time, there is a feast, and there is fasting, three different modes of existence. For an Old Testament Jew, this was indeed so, since fasting was a time when no food at all was taken: a person not only refrained from eating and drinking, but also from ordinary activities, devoting all the time to prayer. Although today we cannot afford to stop eating altogether and stay away from work, we still experience fasting distinctly through restrictions and prayers of a different kind—in other words, through certain formal, outward signs. Yet what the Lord says today through the prophet Isaiah—share your bread with the hungry, bring the wandering poor into your house, and clothe the naked when you see them—does not belong at all to those formal signs by which we recognize that a fast has begun, since we try to do these things at all times. The Lord Himself speaks of this as a commandment for every day. If so, let us read Isaiah's words 'in reverse': turn your whole life into a fast; let every day of yours be like a day of fasting. Is it not the same with all our fasting restrictions? Do we not try to restrain ourselves in ordinary time? Do we not repent and seek unceasing prayer? In fact, seeing fasting as a time for deepening spiritual life is both good and dangerous. Dangerous because it somewhat resembles the familiar 'starting Monday…' We must understand the profound spiritual kinship of fasting, feasts, and ordinary time, their roots in the one soil of life.

Let us recall the apostle Paul's description of his life: '…in labor and exhaustion, often in vigils, in hunger and thirst, often in fasting, in cold and nakedness' (2 Cor. 11:27). The modern translation gives the word 'fasting,' and even Dufour's Dictionary of Biblical Theology interprets it this way. In fact, however, it simply means that there was neither food nor drink—'altogether without food or drink,' as the New Jerusalem Bible translates it. Yet comparing different translations and accepting both in their cultural contexts means only one thing: for the apostle Paul, fasting was his way of life, not a habit of doing it at particular times.

This in no way means that we are trying to challenge the yearly liturgical cycle. No. But our life has changed: fasting comes unexpectedly, not during a break from work in the fields. Just as it is precious for us to pray with the whole Church, so it is precious to pray alone with the Lord. The Church's traditions of fasts and feasts give us a great deal; they are like an engine driving the Church's organism. But just as one cannot tell a hungry person, 'It is not a fast now, so I will not feed you,' one cannot tell the Lord, 'It is a fast now, so kindly let me come before You and listen to what I want to tell You.' For fasting is the whole of life and every day, and so is feasting. The Church simply enables us always to be in unison, even though each of us has a song that is utterly unique.

Chapter 58 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, which we read today, is an astonishing text whose significance for Christians is hard to overestimate. The Lord answers a question about "judgments of righteousness" to people who "desire to draw near to God." "Why have we fasted, and You do not see?" - this is how, with complete frankness, the prophet formulates the "claim" of a devout person against God. Whether we are made this way, or whether the legacy of thousands of years of paganism weighs on us, we instinctively think that God needs our sacrifices, and the more effort we make, the greater mercy we earn.

The Lord speaks severe words in response: "on the day of your fast you seek your own will" and "you fast for quarrels and strife." "Who requires you to trample My courts?" He said at the beginning of the book of Isaiah. God's mercy, and drawing near to Him, can be gained only by mercy and truth embodied in life: "This is the fast that I have chosen: loose the bonds of wickedness..." Thus, in this Old Testament passage, a person's ascetic labor is presented in the same way as in the New Testament. It is important to remember this so that we do not become proud of the heights reached during the past fast...

Today the prophet Isaiah tells us how any works we do while obeying God and acknowledging His rightness and wisdom still become food for our egoism. Fasting would appear to be something a person does because the Lord has said many times how important it is for strengthening faith. Yet the confidence that I am the center of the world is so strong that God, and even more the people around us, become those who must patiently endure my bad mood, my nasty character, and everything connected with me. The main purpose of the world around me is to forget itself and serve completely the smooth running of my fast. This picture is terrible and funny. It is hard to imagine a greater absurdity. And nevertheless the prophet warns us that this is precisely the first and difficult trial for a person: fasting is a time of service to God and neighbor. Service, not bringing both God and neighbor into line with my ideas about how they should behave during my fast.

Fasting, as a religious practice, was known both to Yahwism and to Judaism. Still, neither Yahwism nor Judaism knew multi-day fasts like those Christians of the Middle Ages came to practice. The original meaning of a fast was mourning, usually for a deceased relative, and such a mourning fast could usually last from one to three days. The fast was ordinarily complete: those fasting ate and drank nothing from the evening of the day before the fast until the evening of the fast day itself. In addition, whole cities or villages could take on fasts in the event of some disaster, especially one that was known (often from a prophet's words) to have been allowed by God because of the inhabitants' sins. But such fasts were one-time fasts, and those who fasted took them on for a specific occasion each time.

In the post-exilic period, when the religious life of the Jewish people was already unthinkable outside the synagogue, the practice arose of regular one-day fasts, usually twice a week. These were no longer connected with specific events (in such cases people fasted additionally), but were regarded as a kind of spiritual exercise, and performing it was a religious obligation for every believing Jew. These fasts were understood to be connected with the sins a person fasting might have committed (perhaps without even knowing it), but, as usually happens in such cases, they became a simple formality, a kind of "sacrifice" to God that the fasting person offered Him by refusing water and food for a whole day. Few thought to ask whether God needed such a fast at all. Abstaining from food and drink, it was thought, was supposed to make the fasting person leave the ordinary rut of everyday life, remember God and his neighbor, and experience anew and vividly what a person tends to forget in the bustle of daily routine. In practice, however, abstinence itself became part of the everyday religious routine, as familiar as the routine itself.

In such a situation the prophet had to remind those who fasted that fasting is not simply a religious obligation and not a sacrifice to God, who does not need exercises in abstinence in themselves, but a way to shift a person's attention from himself to God and to his neighbors. If a fast does not fulfill this function, God does not need it and it does the person no good.