A divine oracle resounded to the fathers, that, when they went forth to war, they should sound the trumpet, by whose sound the Lord might be reminded of his people, that he might bestow on them the aid they sought, recognizing the more the incitements of his own mercy; and in the days of their gladness, at their new moons, they should sing together with the sound of the trumpets. Hence David also says: 'Sing on the trumpet at the beginning of the month, on the appointed day of your solemnity.' The day of our solemnity will therefore come to us, and already it draws near. Let us sound the trumpet as those going forth into battle; let us sound the trumpet to proclaim the day of the solemnity. At once both the contest threatens us and victory is promised. Our victory is the cross of Christ; our trophy is the Passover of the Lord Jesus.
But he first fought, that he might conquer, not that he himself needed the contest, but that he might first prescribe for us the form of warfare and afterwards give the grace of triumphing. Our contest is fasting. In short, the Savior fasted, and so the tempter approached him. And first he aimed the dart of gluttony, saying: 'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' He held out food as the bait of a snare, that thus he might ensnare the bodily appetite; the Lord preferred fasting, that he might loose the snares of the tempter, that he might dissolve the chains. In short, thus you have it written: 'Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.' By that snare Adam had been strangled; by this absolution of the diabolical questioning every man has been set free.
Great is the power of fasting; in short, so glorious a warfare is it, that to fast delighted even Christ, so mighty, that it raised men up to heaven. And, to use human rather than divine examples: from the fasting mouth of Elijah a word was sent forth that closed heaven against the sacrilegious people of the Jews. For indeed, when an altar had been set up to the idol by King Ahab, at the prophet's word for three years and six months the dew of rain did not fall upon the earth. A worthy penalty, which fittingly restrained their intemperance, that heaven should be closed to the impious who had polluted earthly things.
Worthy too it was, that for the condemnation of the sacrilegious king the prophet should be sent to the widow in Sarepta of Sidon, who, because she preferred devotion to food, deserved to be the only one not to feel the affliction of the public drought. And so the jar of meal did not fail, when the streams of the torrent failed. Why should I weave together the rest of his deeds? Fasting, he raised the widow's son from the dead; fasting, he brought down the rains by his mouth; fasting, he drew down fire from heaven; fasting, he was caught up by a chariot to heaven, and by a forty-day fast acquired the divine presence. Then indeed he merited the more, when he fasted the more. With fasting mouth he stayed the streams of the Jordan, and crossed the channel of the overflowing river, suddenly dried, with dusty footstep.
Deservedly did the divine sentence judge him worthy of heaven, so that he should be caught up together with his very body, since he lived a heavenly life in the body and displayed the practice of a supernal conversation on earth. For what is fasting but the substance and image of the heavenly? Fasting is the refreshment of the soul, the food of the mind; fasting is the life of angels; fasting is the death of fault, the destruction of transgressions, the remedy of salvation, the root of grace, the foundation of chastity. By this step one comes to God more quickly; by this step Elijah ascended before he did by the chariot; this inheritance of sobriety the abstemious man, departing to heaven, left to his disciple; in this virtue and spirit of Elijah came John. In short, in the desert he too gave himself to fasting;
his food, moreover, was locusts and wild honey. And therefore he who by continence had transcended the capacity of human life was reckoned not a man but an angel. Of him we read: 'Even more than a prophet.' This is he of whom it is written: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, who shall prepare your way before you.' Who by human strength could have mounted the fiery horses, the fiery chariots, could have steered the airy chariots, save one who by the virtue of incorruptible fasting had changed the nature of the human body? But of Elijah's deeds we have already set forth very much in the frequent discourse of various books, and I think it must be guarded against that we should not run over the same ground again, especially since in his own work he is himself praised.
Let us therefore imitate him and seek that food by whose virtue we may be able to advance day and night to the knowledge of things above. For not all food is material, nor all nourishment bodily: there is a food of the mind, as we said, on which souls feast, of which the Lord says: 'My food is to do the will of my Father, who is in heaven.' This is the food of angels, that they serve the divine command. They have no care of tables, no use of banquets, no laid-out feasts, no drinking of wine or strong drink, no distension of the body, no offense of the belly. And so, lest anyone think fasting earthly or novel, the first use of the world began from fasting, when the clear light shone forth.
The second day was a fast, when the firmament of heaven was made. On the third day the earth brought forth its fodder, nature offered its obedience: yet fasting, the heavenly discipline, was kept. On the fourth day the luminaries of the sun and moon were made: and still fasting. On the fifth the waters brought forth the creeping things of living souls and the flying creatures above the earth according to the firmament of heaven, and God saw that they were good. And God blessed them, saying: 'Increase and multiply and fill the waters that are in the sea, and let the flying creatures multiply upon the earth': and still fasting. In short, 'he blessed them' is written 'and said: increase'; he did not say: eat and feed.
On the sixth day the beasts were created, and with the beasts arose the power of eating and the use of foods. Where food began, there came the end of the making of the world; there it began to know no further increase; there the divine works concerning it began to keep holiday. By which indication it was declared that through foods the world should be diminished, through which it ceased to be increased. No one knew transgression, no one feared punishment, no one had known death. The Lord planted a paradise for the grace of the blessed, set man there to till it and to keep it; and, that we may know fasting is not novel, there first he established a law concerning fasting; for he knew that through food guilt would enter. The first punishment was for the transgression of fasting, when the command of God said:
'Of the tree which is of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; but in the day in which you eat of it you shall die the death.' But up to that point no one had known how to transgress, since she who first transgressed the enjoined abstinence had not yet arisen. The law is from the Lord God, the transgression of the law from the devil: guilt through food, hiding after food; the knowledge of weakness in food, the strength of firmness in fasting. In short, as long as they abstained from what was forbidden, they did not know that they were naked; after they ate of the forbidden tree, they recognized that they were stripped bare. Rightly, then, the woman, when she acknowledged the author of her fault, being questioned: 'The serpent persuaded me, and I ate.' The serpent urges the gullet; the Lord decrees to fast. In short, he himself says:
'Fast and pray, lest you enter into temptation.' And so the gullet expelled man as he reigned from paradise; abstinence recalled him as he wandered to paradise. And God said: 'Behold, Adam has become as one of us.' God speaks mocking, of course, not approving; that is: 'Did you think you would be like us? Because you wished to be what you were not, you ceased to be what you were. And so, while you aspire to be above yourself, you have begun to be below yourself.' In short, he first clothed him with a tunic of skins, and then said: 'Behold, Adam,' as if to say: 'Behold your garment, behold your fitting raiment, this clothing befits you. They who affect divine things are reckoned worthy of such adornment.'
'Behold to what your fault has brought you; behold, now in this tunic of skins, as one of us, you have opened your eyes. Look carefully around: you behold yourself naked, whom you thought clothed.' The gullet, then, makes men naked; fastings cover even those who are stripped. Whence the Lord says: 'I covered my soul in fasting.' A good covering, which clothes even the soul, lest it be caught by the tempter, lest it be stripped by the tempter. A good veil which covers fault: abstinence covers, grace covers; for 'blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.' Grace covers, while it remits and abolishes every error; abstinence covers, while it overshadows vice and hides it with sorrowing affection and attenuates it by repenting. For indeed fasting and almsgiving free from sin.
Adam was covered with the veil of virtues before he transgressed. But, as one stripped by transgression, he saw that he was naked, because he had lost the garment that he had. 'For in the days of your fasts,' it says, 'your morning light shall rise for you, and your healing shall rise speedily, and righteousness shall go before you, and the majesty of the Lord shall surround you.' A good garment is light. For it is written: 'Surrounded with light as with a garment.' A good garment, when the Lord surrounds and covers those who fast. Noah was stripped naked when he was made drunk: the piety of his sons covered him. But he was stripped through ignorance, not through intemperance; for as yet wine was unknown. At the beginning of the human race drunkenness was unknown.
He himself first planted a vineyard: he gave it its nature, but knew not its potency. And so the wine did not spare even its own author. What wonder if, when the Lord himself had praised his creatures, this man too marveled? And so, when the grace of the gift he had found delighted him, the too-vehement creature tested the old man's unaccustomed limbs; the ninth draught troubled him. 'They slumbered,' it says, 'who mounted the horses.' He mounted the pleasures of the body: and the righteous man fell asleep. But his drunkenness urges sobriety upon us. For Noah was made drunk only once; but when he came to know the evil of drunkenness, he tempered his invention into a remedy, he did not pour it out into vice. Whence the Apostle says: 'Use a little wine for your frequent infirmities.'
Before wine was discovered, there remained for all an unshaken liberty; no one knew to exact the services of slavery from a partner of his own nature. There would be no slavery today, had drunkenness not existed. The envy of fraternal preference had indeed crept in, yet the reverence of paternal piety still remained. Piety was wounded, while drunkenness is laughed at. And so wines harm not only those alone whom they tempt, but even more those before whose eyes the drunken limbs of the inebriated are bared. Hence irreverent laughter is born, hence lust is inflamed, so that with far greater intoxication wines disturb those whose eyes and mind they have made drunk, than those whose limbs they have laid low.
We read too that the daughters made their father Lot drunk on that mountain to which, fearing the Sodomite fires, they had fled and were dwelling in a cave. Age, sex, solitude—a place fitter for the lairs of wild beasts than for human dwellings—all concur and conspire to drunkenness. And so drunkenness was the origin of incest, the worse offspring of a most wicked progenitress. But Abraham did not serve wine at his banquet: he sacrificed a calf, and offered butter and milk also to the angelic guests—he recognized the Lord of heaven, the Author of the world—; for he could not offer wine. But rightly was the material of sin lacking there, where there was the remission of sins. In short, John proclaimed him as neither eating bread nor drinking wine;
for he who proclaims Christ ought to keep himself a stranger to every incentive of vices. Drunkenness therefore conquered both holy Noah and even Lot, Abraham's nephew; of whom the one, while he fasted, survived the flood, the other the conflagration. We have learned too that Moses tempered the bitterness of the waters for the thirsting people, not wines. For him whom the rock spewed forth water, abundance of wine too could not have been lacking. In short, God said: 'You shall strike the rock, and water shall come out, and the people shall drink'; he did not say: 'wine shall come out among the people'; for it was perilous to serve wine, which even the stronger could scarcely bear. In short, Moses gave a law concerning fasting; concerning wine he gave none.
As he himself fasted, neither the great voices, nor the lightnings and stormy clouds, nor the smoking Sinai terrified him. Nor indeed would he have entered into the cloud and heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire without peril to his safety, had he not been fortified with the arms of fasting. For he fasted forty days on the mountain, when he received the law from the Lord our God. And while in the higher parts of the mountain the law was being given to the fasting Moses, in the lower parts the sacrilegious transgression of the feasting people was kindled by riot. Moved by which spectacle, Moses broke the tablets, judging it unworthy that the law should be given to a drunken people. And so the tablets of the law, which abstinence received, drunkenness caused to be shattered. But why should I speak of other things?
Did not abstinence from wine make fruitful the barrenness of Samson's mother and cause her, barren, to bear? Since according to the Lord's command she drank no wine. Did not the Lord hear Hannah as she did not eat, and did not fasting loose her infertility? Of which two who were born, the one most strong, the other most observant, showed themselves worthy to be seen as long cherished in the bosom of fasting and as it were poured forth from the womb of abstinence. And so this same Samson, who was begotten by his mother's sobriety, was avenged upon the drunkenness of the foreign peoples who insulted him.
The prophet Elisha, who had learned frugality from his master, when he fed the sons of the prophets, loaded the tables with the little clusters of a wild vine and filled the office of hospitable kindness with useless woodland fruits. When, offended by their bitterness, they could not eat, by a sprinkling of light meal he tempered all that bitterness, by the gift of prophetic abstinence emptying out the powers of the poison. There is a certain nature of a created thing, which they call asbestos, not easily consumed by any fire, which, placed on hearths, catches fire, and, the moment it is taken up out of the flame, shines clean as though by an infusion of water. Such were the bodies of the Hebrew youths, which, transformed from fasting into the nature of asbestos, borrowed the vapor of the fire not to their own loss, but to their grace.
In short, when the fires of the furnace raged, so that the flame was poured around to more than forty cubits, consuming very many of the Chaldeans whom it found, who supplied fuel to the fires with naphtha, pitch and tow and brushwood, when those youths entered in with fasting, the burning of the flames being scattered, in the midst of the furnace they began at once to grow moist with the breath of a refreshing dew, so that not a hair of their head was burned, because fasting had nourished even that hair. Daniel, a man of desires, by a three-week fast taught even lions to fast. Cast into the den, his limbs hardened into the rigidity of adamant by the solidity of abstinence, he lay open to no wound.
So had fasting bound him fast, that in his body there could be no place for the beasts' bites. The lions held their mouths shut, which the sanctity of prophetic abstinence pressed together, so that the beasts could not open them, bound as it were by certain chains of his merit. Fasting therefore extinguished the power of fire; fasting stopped the mouths of lions; fasting solidified the streams of the sea; fasting loosed the rock into fountains of waters; by the power of fasting, against its own nature changed, both the wave grew hard and the rock overflowed. And why should I use ancient examples, when fasting abounds even in the gifts of present graces? Who has worsened his house by fasting? Who has diminished his resources? To whom is luxury not suspect, to whom is abstinence not venerable?
Whose bed has frugality ever coveted? Whose chastity has drunkenness never wounded? Fasting is the schoolmaster of self-control, the discipline of chastity, the humility of the mind, the chastening of the flesh, the form of sobriety, the rule of virtue, the purification of the soul, the outlay of mercy, the schooling of gentleness, the allurement of charity, the grace that crowns old age, the safeguard of youth. Fasting is the relief of infirmity, the nourishment of salvation. No one ever fell into indigestion by fasting; no one through self-restraint ever felt a stroke of apoplexy — nay rather, all have checked and driven it off. It is a good provision for the road, a good for the whole of life, a good upon the sea: it stills shipwrecks, it preserves our food. They say that fasting is hard: let them answer — who ever perished from fasting?
Many at the banquet, very many while they vomit, have poured out their life along with the feast. What animal, in the end, ever lamented that fasting was the cause of its death? In food a snare is not avoided; in food the hook lies hidden: food draws one down into the pit, food leads into the nets, food binds even the birds with birdlime, food brings the flying creatures down to death. What perils are there that are not for the belly's sake? Dumb animals know no crime, and yet in this one thing alone they are punished as though for a crime. Fasting is the sobriety of the mind. By it the senses are vigorous; in it judgments are weighed, in the banquet only the cups. Fasting guards discipline; want follows upon luxury. Luxury is the mother of famine, according to the prophetic saying. Fasting loves quiet, luxury loves disquiet: fasting sows leisure, excess sows toils.
Someday the cook's whip and the scourger's blade will strike. Let the caterer rest — he who, before dawn breaks, pounds on other men's doors, and as though some war were imminent rouses the sleepers. You see him in a turmoil, you notice him panting. You ask what is the cause of his agitation. 'My master is giving a feast,' he says; he is searching where better wine may be sold, where a tenderer sow's womb may be had, where a softer liver, where a plumper pheasant, where a fresher fish. He runs about through every quarter, and when he has found it, he hastens at top speed, disturbs his drowsy master, bids up the prices. If the price of a fish has stirred him, he insists that no better are anywhere to be found — indeed, that they are lacking. 'Yesterday,' he says, 'there was a tempest, today a squall; I could scarcely catch this one as it lurked hidden.' Many crowd together in the meat-market.
'If you pay this much, another will give more — and what will you set before your guests?' 'This wine comes from such-and-such a vintage; these oysters were gathered from that famous bed.' Such is the bidding made over every item; a kind of auction-spear is brandished between the caterer and the herdsman. Distraught, the master knocks down his patrimony to the bidder, and still begs for those through whom the rights to his own goods may be whittled away. They run to the kitchen; a huge din arises, an uproar arises. The whole household is thrown into commotion, they all curse, because no rest is granted them. At last, at long last, grant the cook some rest, hold back the cupbearer's right hand: the depth of winter is stiff with frost. One man exercises his hands in cold water, for another the marble floors are washed. They cleanse the pavements soaked with wine and strewn with fish-bones. How many are wounded as they walk over them!
At the banquet itself there is the shouting of the feasters, the groaning of those being thrashed. If perhaps something has displeased your friends, they laugh: you fume with indignation. Let the house at last fall silent from the many disturbances of those scurrying this way and that, from the noise of slaughtered animals; let it be free from smoke and from the reek of half-burnt meats. You would think it not a kitchen but a butcher's shambles, that a battle was being waged, not a dinner prepared: so does everything swim with blood. Service is rendered to that evil mistress, gluttony, who is always craving and is never satisfied. For what is more insatiable than the belly? Today it takes in, tomorrow it demands again. When it has been filled, there is talk of self-restraint; when it has digested, virtues are bidden farewell, and it seeks luxury. Amid the cups, philosophy is proclaimed; among philosophers, wines are praised.
'Sleeplessness,' it says, 'and bile and torment are for the insatiable man.' He eats, and a little after he repents of it. His intemperance did not for long delight that rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and feasted sumptuously every day, at whose gate that beggar Lazarus lay full of sores, longing to be filled with what fell from the rich man's table. A little while after, when he had died, being placed in hell he began to beg that the poor man might dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue, which was burning in the flame. Where now are those abundances? Where now those drunken bouts? He thirsts who used to be made drunk; he abounds who used to beg. At the very banquet, while they drink, they thirst, and when they have been made drunk, they drink yet more.
As though over an open whirlpool, the wine is now not so much drunk as poured in: the cup is not sipped but drained dry. 'Thorns,' Scripture says, 'spring up in the hand of the drunkard,' because he wounds himself with his own hands, he casts ulcers upon his own breast. With these thorns he tears the garment of faith which he received, and he will not be able to keep his treasure; for every drunkard and fornicator shall come to want, and shall clothe himself in the torn garments of folly. And therefore the mighty are forbidden to drink wine, lest, having drunk, they forget wisdom. In short, those mighty men drank wine to drunkenness who longed to surrender themselves to Holofernes, the commander of the army of the king of the Assyrians; but the woman Judith did not drink, fasting all the days of her widowhood except on the solemnities of the festal days.
Armed with these weapons she went forth, and encircled the whole army of the Assyrians. Sober, by the vigor of her counsel she carried off the head of Holofernes, she preserved her chastity, she won back the victory. For she, girded with fasting, kept guard in the enemy's camp, while he lay buried in wine, so that he could not feel the stroke of the wound. And so the fasting of a single woman laid low the countless armies of drunken men.
Esther too, made more beautiful by fasting — for the Lord was increasing the grace of her sober mind — delivered her whole race, that is, the entire people of the Jews, from the bitterness of persecution, so that she made the king subject to her, not inflamed with the ardor of lust, but converted by heavenly compassion, with the result that both the punishment was turned back upon the wicked man, and honor was restored to the sacred altars. And so she who fasted three days continuously and washed her body with water pleased more, and obtained vengeance. But Haman, while he boasted in the royal banquet, amid the very wine paid the penalty of his drunkenness. Fasting therefore is the sacrifice of reconciliation, the increase of virtue, which by the augmentation of grace made even women stronger.
Fasting knows no usurer; it knows nothing of the principal of interest; the table of those who fast does not reek of usury; the hundredth-part interest owed to a father does not strangle the son of a self-controlled man; mortgaged rights do not harass the widow of a sober man who has died; and the hall stripped bare by debt does not shut out the heir of one who fasts. To the very banquets, too, fasting gives grace. Sweeter become the dishes after hunger, which by their constancy become wearisome and by daily continuance grow cheap. Fasting is the seasoning of food. The keener the appetite, the more delightful the food. Thirst commends the cup. He does not know how to seek out the charms of wine who passes whatever he has drained straight on to satiety, and does not lift his nostril for discernment. By use even precious things degenerate.
But of those things whose possession is difficult, the enjoyment is welcome. The sun itself is more welcome after the night, the light itself more splendid after the darkness, and sleep sweeter after vigils, health itself more delightful after the trials of sickness. From the very Maker of the world we have learned that grace is often heaped up by contrasts. Hunger therefore is the patron even of the banquet, and the table is made more welcome by fastings. The mystical table, too, is gained by fasting — that table of which David says: 'Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that trouble me.' It is acquired at the price of hunger, and that cup that makes drunk is sought through thirst by the sobriety of the heavenly sacraments. For the Lord has said:
'You who thirst, go to the water, and whoever of you has no money, go and buy and drink and eat.' And elsewhere he says: 'Behold, those who serve me shall eat, but you shall hunger; behold, those who serve me shall drink, but you shall thirst.' Who are 'you,' if not those who drank beforehand? Of whom he had said above: 'You have prepared a table for demons, and you have filled the cup of fortune.' If, therefore, holy fastings lead us to that venerable table, if by this hunger we purchase those things which are eternal, why do we hesitate about those things which are in human use — namely, that fasting may make even these more pleasant to us? Yet not every hunger makes an acceptable fast, but the hunger which is undertaken in the fear of God. Consider:
Throughout Lent there is fasting on all days except the Sabbath and the Lord's Day. This fast the Lord's Pasch concludes. Now comes the day of resurrection: the elect are baptized, they come to the altar, they receive the sacrament. Thirsting, they draw it in with all their veins. Rightly do they say, each one refreshed with spiritual food and spiritual drink: 'Thou hast prepared a table before me, and how excellent is thy cup that makes me drunk!' Yet not hunger alone is sought, but the full discipline of fasting. In short, to others it is said: 'On the days of your fasts you find your own wills, and you goad on all who are subject to you. Do you fast for quarrels and strife, and strike with your fists? Why is such a fast to me, that your voice should be heard in clamor?'
'This is not the fast that I have chosen, nor the day for a man to humble his soul; nor that you should bend your neck like a hoop, and strew ashes and sackcloth beneath you — not even thus shall you call your fast acceptable. Such a fast I have not chosen, says the Lord.' We have heard what fast is condemned; now let us hear what is approved. 'But loose every bond of your injustice, dissolve the obligations of violent bargains, let the broken go free unto release, and break apart every unjust written agreement. Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the needy who have no shelter into your house. If you see a naked man, cover him, and you shall not despise the members of your own household and seed.'
You see what is the appearance and form of fasting, what disposition of mind: that you be free for prayer, that you meditate on the law of God day and night. The very figure of the body is full of gravity. No flush of drunkenness suffused upon the cheeks, to offend the gaze of beholders; rather the face shines revered with a chaste pallor. The speech is graver, the eye more modest, the gait steadier and more measured; for very often by a more agitated walk the movement of the mind is betrayed. The countenance is more intent, and is, as it were, the arbiter of one's own thought and the silent interpreter of the heart, so that it neither cloaks itself with sadness nor dissolves into unrestrained laughter. For do not think this to be a superfluous part of our admonition, since Wisdom says in the Gospel: