It is not unusual to give thought to how we keep a
fast. Will it be in a strict manner? How will my fasting be possible when I’m
at work or at school? How will I teach my children to fast? When we ignore the
Fast, we feel guilty and the need to confess. It is strange, however, that we
do not give similar thought and time to what it means to keep the Feast. For
fasting is about the Feast—not about the Fast. Everything is about the Feast!
Our popular culture has no difficulty keeping its
feast of Christmas—and though we complain about how commercial the feast
becomes—we live in a commercial culture. Our way of life and economy are
grounded in consumerism. If we stop shopping, the nation will collapse (as a
consumer nation).
Almost everything in our culture radiates from its
consumerist existence. Even how we think of what it means to be human is driven
by consumerism. Popular culture thinks of a human being as a center of
consciousness with free will. It is a very simplified view of the human—but
ideally suited for shopping. We think, we decide, therefore we shop!
Thus, the popular feast of Christmas is kept by doing
a lot of what we do best—we shop. It is something of a redemption that at least
an aspect of our shopping is buying things for others.
But the Orthodox understanding of the feast is not
grounded in consumerism. We do not believe people were created to consume. We
are created to commune.
We do not eat in order to live—we eat in order to be
in communion with God. When we live rightly, everything we do is done in order
to enjoy communion with God and with other human beings. Said quite simply—we
exist in order to love.
We keep the feast of Christmas, not by consuming or
affirming our place within the world of consumption—we keep the feast by
entering more deeply into the life of communion—with God and with others.
We enter into communion with God through prayer and
devotion and the keeping of His commandments. We enter into communion with
others through forgiveness, acts of kindness and generosity. Communion often
consumes things—we eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood. But we do not eat His
Body and Blood as though we were predators or as though His Body and Blood were
objects to fill our bellies.
We eat and drink Christ’s Body and Blood in order to
share in His life and in order to share our life with Him.
Our use of the things of this world with regard to
others can become communion if we treat those things in the same way. If the
things in our life are a means of sharing—both our own lives and in the lives
of others—then they can become communion.
A gift, given and received as an act of sharing, and
not simply an act of consumption, can quickly rise to the level of communion.
There are gifts I have been given through the years whose value comes not from
the market but from the giver and the “life” of the giver that is carried by
the object. Such things in our lives bring remembrance and communion with every
use.
We approach the feast of God’s greatest gift—His life
incarnate in our world. God became man. In so doing He revealed our humanity as
itself a great gift. The life of every human being bears the potential of
communion with God. Every act of kindness, offered even to the “least of
these,” is received as an act of communion with God Himself.
Keep the Feast
with care this year!
Fr. Stephen Freeman
Glory to God for All Things
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