TeacherAide
A weekly
teaching aide for student developers
Beneath The Surface
SESSION 13
HANDS ON
Have your students agree to fast for twelve hours before coming to class. When they arrive discuss what it is like to deny yourself food. Discuss how fasting can be a great opportunity to commune with the Lord without distraction.
Sometimes we will come up with any excuse not to fast. Here is a good example of clever excuse making. A man had a son with a physical malady, which required a restricted diet. The son always raided the refrigerator, and so the father forbade him to ever get into the refrigerator by himself. One night, the father saw a dim light go on in the kitchen – the light from inside the refrigerator. He got up and went into the kitchen just in time to see him standing before an open refrigerator, with his hand inside it. The father said, “Son, what are you doing in that refrigerator?” With hardly any hesitation the son replied, “I was just cooling my hand.”
I THOUGHT I HEARD YOU SAY
When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.
St. Jerome
When we finish a fast, we cool into tempered Christians strong with self-control. The dross and cinders of our lustful cravings are skimmed off. Fasting produces a work of art - the tempered, selfless Christian - that can be created through no other process of refinement.
Lee Bueno
"We do not fast because we think there is anything in itself unclean about the act of eating and drinking. Food and drink are, on the contrary, God’s gift, from which we are to partake with enjoyment and gratitude. We fast, not because we despise the divine gift, but so as to make ourselves aware that it is indeed a gift – so as to purify our eating and drinking, and to make them, no longer a concession to greed, but a sacrament and means of communion with the Giver.
Bishop Kallistos Ware
"Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and let the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies
John Chrysostom