Someone said to Fr. Alexander Elchaninov: “you do not find ill-tempered people just as you do during the last week of the Great Lent”. He answered him: “what you are saying is absolutely true. This is what always happens when we separate fasting from prayer…”! I do not think there is an indication more eloquent than this dialogue that fasting is not a mere diet or a stand-alone goal. We do not really understand fasting before we discover that it never goes without companions it never abandons: Almsgiving; Virtue (humility, chastity, fraternal love…); And prayer, prayer which is its first companion. When the fasting reaches its goal (Pascha, if it is the Great Lent), it entrusts us with its soul (that is, the life of abstinence) and its companions. During Lent as well as outside of it, this is the secret of hesychasm, the secret of victory over the wrath and every insanity in the world (Matthew 17: 21).
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