In this video, Fr. Rafail Noica talks about the true essence of fasting and spiritual life. He explains why the Church’s traditions are a starting point for a deeper relationship with God, rather than a checklist of rules. He shows that the Church’s rules are not about “performance” or rigid rules, but are a “takeoff runway” for a deeper spiritual life.
Source: Conference “S-a dus să-L vadă precum este” (Cluj, Romania, May 30, 2013).
Fr. Rafail:
The Church has given us everything at a level that is more or less accessible to us all, but we must use the Church as a take-off runway.
Fasting is something entirely different from what we know. Some of us, unfortunately—not me, but some—have known how to fast more… But fasting is not about performance; it is about a spiritual need.
For the time being, it is a very intelligent way of living if we keep it intelligently, and we can learn this from young girls who want to keep their figure, though sometimes they are too zealous and overdo it. But I mean that they keep their diet intelligently, because they are aiming at something. We too must learn to aim at something, and to pray to God to inspire us what we should seek. For everything in the Church was not the performance of extraordinary people; it was born of certain needs.
And when we sing in the troparia, “an ascetic struggle beyond nature,” yes, but not performance. These were needs, as Saint Paul says: “the flesh lusts against the soul, the spirit, and the spirit lusts against the flesh.” But so long as we live all these things as a rule—for that is how it is said: “Ah, today we can eat fish, so we eat fish; but tomorrow it cannot be eaten. So… a strict fast, let us say.” Well then, good, a good rule. And if we live it intelligently, it is very healthy, a very good rule. We would no longer be among us, uh, as they say, overweight, fat, to put it plainly in Romanian, and other things… well… it is not only food that makes us gain weight; there are also illnesses, and heredity, and other things. But I mean that at the level of diet, at the level of life, all these things are made intelligently, yet it is only the take-off runway.
Much greater things would await us if, like the Fathers, and this is what I was observing, and this is what begins to be the person… The person is the one who begins to sense, let us say, to pick up the scent of the prey.
A dog runs in the forest. Why? The other dogs, observing this, may make a rule of it: “Let us run into the forest too.” Yes, but the one who ran had picked up the scent of the prey; he knew what he was pursuing. And so also these people who fasted less, or more strictly, or beyond bodily measure—but these ones knew what they were doing.
We keep certain rules, and let us keep them, for they are good, they are wise, but wisdom means that still, each one according to his measure… And here, spiritual fathers, in your hands are the souls and bodies of many. You do not give an old person or a sick person a rule, let us say, as you would give to a young man for whom it is good, healthy, to do, I do not know, x number of prostrations.
Yes, if he does not do prostrations, then he does bodybuilding, gymnastics, what are those called—weights, dumbbells, weights—and other things… in any case, all kinds of things. He torments his body. And now, in the cities, gyms are full of what I call instruments of torture: bicycles that go nowhere, things that work you until you pant and sweat and I don’t know what else. And people, sir, buy them and even torment themselves with them.
Likewise, if we understood the Church, the rule, we would no longer need all these things. In any case, I am speaking generally: today, with life as it is, someone who spends his whole life working in an office, in front of a computer, poor man… But I mean to say that, in general, if we understood the Church, we would not need other things. However, and this is the word for today, this evening, it is a “take-off runway.” Other things await us, and we must understand.
It is not true. In general, people live by the false meaning of the saying “believe and do not inquire.” On the contrary, it must be inquired into. We must, with understanding, in our freedom, come to this. In the beginning we are constrained, and we willingly let ourselves be constrained because we love the Church or we trust the Church and so we do things with some constraint. We look in the calendar to see whether we can eat fish or not. There is a certain constraint. But when we come to live more fully, to understand more fully, to pick up the scent of the prey, then all these things begin to become like a trampoline, from which we do nothing else than make our leap into the eternal.
And so may God help us all.
Father Sophrony used to tell us: “Live as a man.” And what does it mean to live as a man? Pray for one another, each for each, and for all. And here I would say: if you see that your neighbor sins, or upsets you, or troubles you, at first try—for it is an ascetic struggle—not so much to be upset, not to judge, but to pray for the poor man.
If you see that the priest or the spiritual father scandalizes you, pray for him. If the bishop scandalizes you with some thing or another… pray for him. Let each one pray for all the members of the Church and for the whole Church, and then we would become another world.
And with that perhaps it is enough.
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