“You appear to use the word fast to mean abstaining only from certain foods rather than not eating or drinking at all. Are there also times when Orthodox Christians totally abstain from eating?” D.K. - Edgware.
IN FACT, the word “fast” is used by Orthodox Christians to mean both abstinence from certain foods and total abstinence from all food and drink. Knowing the weakness of our nature and our lack of application, the Church only imposes total abstinence from all food and drink for very limited periods. The abstinence from certain types of foods She enjoins for longer periods, sometimes for whole days and sometimes for weeks at a time. Thus we have the four fasting periods (Great Lent, the Nativity Fast, the Apostles’ Fast, and the Dormition Fast); we have the weekly fasts on most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year, and some special days of fasting (the day before Theophany, the Festival of the Universal Exaltation of the Cross, the Beheading of St John Baptist).
On these days we abstain from certain foods (see our calendar insert fasting guidelines) as an ascetic discipline and so that we bind ourselves to the life of the Church by fasting on these days together with all Orthodox Christians. Thus even though we might be about our daily concerns or very far from a church, by saying our prayers at home and keeping these fasting disciplines we join ourselves to the company of the believers and are one with them, both the Orthodox Christians still struggling in this life and those who in all ages past have ended their earthly course but kept these same disciplines.
Total abstinence is enjoined on the faithful at the following times:-
a) before receiving Holy Communion - although allowances are made for people who are seriously ill and infirm, this rule is kept most strictly. On the days that they are approaching for Holy Communion, the faithful abstain from all food and drink from midnight until they receive the Holy Mysteries, so that the Body and Blood of Christ are the very first food that they partake of that day.
b) properly one should in fact keep a like fast when attending the Divine Liturgy even if one is not going to receive Communion, so that one breaks one’s fast that day with the blessing of the antidoron at the end of the Liturgy. Generally this discipline not so strictly applied in parish churches today. Also at home the faithful often keep blessed prosphora so that they can begin each day by eating a small particle with a sip of holy water.
c) for some other particularly important services, such as the Bringing-out of the Winding Sheet on Good Friday, many of the faithful also keep a complete fast from food and drink.
d) properly on the weekdays in Lent, one should not eat or drink anything until three in the afternoon, although again this discipline is not strictly applied.
e) many of the faithful, particularly from the Balkan Churches, keep a complete three-day fast (sometimes allowing water) for the first three days of Great Lent (until after receiving the Holy Mysteries at the Presanctified Liturgy on the Wednesday). Some even extend this to the Friday, keeping five days. Again the Church does not enforce such strictness on everyone - many would simply be unable to keep it without becoming ill. Usually those of the faithful who wish to fast in this way are encouraged to discuss it with their spiritual fathers, lest they overstretch themselves. This fast recalls the fast proclaimed in Nineveh when the Prophet Jonas called the people to repentance. They turned to repentance by fasting, as do those who observe this practice and begin the period of repentance, the Great Lent, with a fast of total abstinence from food.
