Why Fast From Meat? |

As is read on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, when meat consumption comes to an end:

“But let us turn back to repentance and, fasting from the food that gives us pleasure,
let us cleanse our senses on which the enemy makes war. Let us strengthen our hearts with the hope of grace,
and not with foods which brought no benefit to those who trusted in them.
Our food shall be the Lamb of God...” [1]

Fasting (nesteia, νηστεία) is an integral and ancient aspect of the liturgical life, highlighted by abstinence from meat—and in turn, of freedom from carnal passions, of dependence on God, of unclouded divine perspective, of spiritual and physical health, and of restoration of relationship with creation. It follows that many saints and ascetics never, or rarely, eat meat on a regular basis.

Great Lent is provided, not only as a stark reminder that Adam is deemed the first to break the fast in eating of the forbidden fruit, [2] but that Christians too share in this impassioned condition of the flesh and lured to kinship with the carnal passions. St. Basil the Great clarifies:

“Adam quickly became full of everything. And as it were becoming insolent through satiety,
he preferred what appeared delightful to the fleshly eyes to the spiritual beauty
and considered the filling of the stomach more valuable than the spiritual enjoyments." [3]

Such concerns are often cited as primary reasons for abstinence from meat, alongside the Scriptural understanding that the eating of meat was given as a consolation by God due to human sin (Gen 9). [4] Thus, across ascetical writings, the killing and eating of animal flesh is viewed as the most primal and carnal of fallen humanity, "touching our mercenary interests,” [5] alongside the general forbiddance of eating meat with its blood (Gen 9:3–4; Lev 17:13–14; Acts 15: 28–29)—which teaches, “not to be inhuman and bloodthirsty like the wild beasts…For it is enough for them to become so cruel and compassionless as to slaughter the animals, but certainly they ought not to be so excessively compassionless as to eat them with their blood." [6]

Thus, fasting from consuming animal flesh is not because Christians hate animals, but because we love them; not because God’s creation is bad, but because it is good. As Kallistos Ware summarizes, “We fast, not out of hatred for God's creation, but so as to control the body; also fasting enables us to help the poor, for the food that we ourselves refrain from eating can be given to others who are in need.” [7]

A goal of both fasting and eating, then, “is an invitation to return to Paradise, to man’s condition before the Fall,” [8] a call that is echoed in the hymns of Great Lent—“If we long to dwell in Paradise, let us abstain from all needless [unprofitable] food” [9]—and a restoration of the relationship with creation, as St Basil the Great beautifully encourages:

“However, now indeed as we wish to conduct ourselves in imitation of the life of Paradise,
we avoid this excessively material enjoyment of foods, conducting ourselves as far as is possible according to that life,
using fruits and grains and the produce of fruit trees for passing through life,
but what surpasses these things we reject as unnecessary.” [10]

Yet, fasting from animal meat and death is also an invitation to look forward, to Christ’s return in peace and joy, as St Nikolai Velimirovich reflects, “While waiting for You, I wish neither to nourish myself with blood nor to take life—so that the animals may sense the joy of my expectation.” [11]