September 14 is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross for most Christian groups who have a liturgical calendar of such feasts. It has always been an important day for the Carmelites (my former community) because it marked the beginning of the six-month period of fasting prior to the following Easter. (This did not mean they did not eat. It was a modified fast: one full meal a day with no snacking, but with a small meal for breakfast and supper. No meat, of course.) That fast is no longer strictly kept by most Carmelite communities, but the feast itself remains as a reminder to repent and be converted in heart, mind, speech and action, something that I need year-round.
2 comments:
I alway learn so much about religious life reading your blog, Michael.
A 6 MONTH fast? Wow. First of all- thats a LONG time to fast....But how do they celebrate Christmas if they are fasting?(Serious question- I know they do things differently, but it seems like the birth of Christ celebration isn't a time for deprivation, it should be a time of feasting and celebrating!)
And second of all that "fast" sounds like my daily food regime except for the no meat thing. I can't do meat avoidance.....No one likes me when I need meat.
I just don't get religion sometimes. It seems very confusing.
With most religious traditions that have customs of fasting, feasting always takes precedence. So the Carmelites never fasted on Sundays (always seen as a celebration of the resurrection) or on other major feasts, including Christmas. Fasting was understood as a way to prepare for and and heighten the enjoyment of a feast, never as something to replace a feast.
The basic Carmelite fast format, which comes from the early 1200s, reflects the way most people, certainly the poor, ate at the time. There was seldom extra food to snack on for the poor, and they could seldom eat red meat anyway. So the fast and abstinence were reminders not to indulge in luxuries normally (then) restricted to the ruling classes. There were guidelines about what constituted the smaller meals so that they did remain simple.
In the Carmelite Rule itself, by the way, it says that necessity overrides all laws -- so the sick or elderly who needed to eat more or who might need meat were always to be given what they needed. Etc.
I could go off onto a tangent about the differences between the Anglo-American understanding of law as always binding and the Roman understanding of it as an ideal towards which one aims, but I will save that for another time.
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