Fasting is a Divine commandment and a great spiritual struggle and the supreme expression of the ascetic ideal of Orthodoxy. According to the Apostle Paul, our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and through diet we take care of it. By praising the Lord and praying for “the bread of life” we expect to have the daily nourishment necessary for our body and spirit. The bread necessary for our life and especially the spiritual food:

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, thy will be done in heaven, thy will be done on earth.

From the Bible even, references to food are numerous and Adam and Eve enjoy the good things of “all vegetation”. And fasting is a commandment of God. The first and oldest of all was given to Adam in Paradise.

Meat is added to the diet after Noah’s flood. Numerous references to grains and legumes are found in the Old Testament.

Models of fasters in the New Testament are the sacred figures who received the Lord in the Temple as an infant.

Moments from Jesus’ own life, as well as many of his greatest miracles, are related to food. From the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to the -extraordinary- delivery of the Eucharist at the Last Supper.
Bread and wine are the fundamental elements of the Eucharist, and the vine in the New Testament symbolizes Christ himself. And Christ Himself calls Himself “ambelon”, His Father “George” and His disciples and faithful “vines”.
The value of food is supreme, as through the communion of persons the image of Paradise is revealed.
After all, the first Christians, through their affections, were already experiencing the joy of Paradise.
Through the Patristic Texts and passages from the Holy Bible, the truths revealed to people by God are preserved throughout the centuries. Here we find information relevant to the value of fasting and the role of food for human existence, and references to specific categories of food.

Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit

• 1 Cor. 6,19: Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you, that you are not of God, and that you are not of yourselves?
• Mt 6,11: Give us this day our daily bread;

Fasting

Moses purifies himself by an absolute fast of forty days on Mount Sinai before receiving the tablet with the Ten Commandments.

• Ex. 34:28: And Moses was there against the Lord forty days and forty nights; he took no bread, and took no water; and wrote upon the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten words.
• Matt. 6,16: And when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites that are sulky: for their faces are destroyed, as they appear to men that fast: for I say not unto you, that they have forsaken the half of them.
• Matt. 6,17 : But thou that fastest shall bruise thy head, and wash thy face,
• Mt 6,18: As thou shalt not appear unto men fasting, but unto thy father in secret, and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee in the open.
• Matt. 9,15: And Jesus said unto them, Can not the sons of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? And there shall be days when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then they shall fast.

On the food and fasting of Jesus

• Luke. 24,41: And when they believed them from the east and marvelled, he said unto them, Have ye here any thing to eat?
• Luke. 24,42 : And they gave him a fish of which the part and of beeswax,
• Luke. 24,43: And when they had taken it before them, they said.
• Matt. 4,1 : Then Jesus was in the wilderness under the Spirit, being tempted by the devil,
• Matt. 4,2: And having fasted forty days and forty nights, he died.

Adam and Eve enjoy the benefits of all vegetation

• Gen. 2,16: And the Lord God joined in with Adam, saying, Of all the wood of the garden he shall eat,
• Gen 2,17: And of the wood of it shall ye do good and evil, ye shall not eat of it: or else if ye eat of it in the day, ye shall surely die.

Before the flood of Noah, food is consumed from the vegetable kingdom

• Gen 6:21: And when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites that are sulky: for their faces shall perish, as they appear to men that fast: for I say not unto you, that they shall abstain from their meat.

After the flood, meat is added to the diet.

• Gen. 9,3 : And every living creature that creepeth, I have given to thee for meat: as grass sprouts have I given to thee all things.
• Gen 9,4: But meat in the blood of the soul ye shall not eat.

The manna

Ex. 16:15, This is the bread which the Lord gives you to eat.

The miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes

Matt. 14:19 And when he had beckoned the vipers to recline on the grass, he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and with a cry he gave the disciples the loaves, and the disciples the vipers.

Cereals – Legumes – Fruits – Oil and Healing Herbs in the Old and New Testament

• Gen. 18:6: And Abram hastened unto Sarran by the tent, and said unto her, Make haste, and flee three measures of modesty, and drink praise.
• Matt. 12,1 At that time Jesus passed through the sown fields on a Sabbath day; his disciples were waiting and began to cut ears of corn, rub them and eat the fruit.

• Gen. 25:34 : And Jacob gave Esau a harpoon and a torch, and he ate, and he breathed, and he sighed, and Esau ate the firstfruits.
• Ex. 16,31: The Israelites called this bread “manna”. It was white as the seeds of a cockroach, and the taste of it was like a honey cake.
• Isa 28:25 : Shall she not, when she hath smoothed her face, sow a little ink or cumin, and again sow fire and brimstone and cherubims and yeast in thy midst?
• Luke. 15,16: And thou shalt fill his belly with the cherries which the swine eat, and thou shalt not give him.
• Isaiah 38:21 : And Isaiah said unto Hezekiah, Take a palm of figs, and rub it, and swallow it, and it shall be whole.
• Mark. 6,13: And they cast out many demons, and they licked with oil many sick people, and healed them.