Great Lent

The Material Benefits of Fasting

by Fr. Dr. Biji Chirathilattu

The Material Benefits of Fasting [1]

Fasting helps the repulsion of the plentiness of sleep, because the one who is full drinks (a lot) and the one who drinks more, his sleep also multiplies. [2] It is useful that man is not engaged with preparing food and thus being lazy in service.

Well, in accordance with the fact that Bar Ebroyo himself was a doctor, he underlines through a quotation from the doctors of his time that fasting improves the health of the body also: "Who does not eat before he is hungry and who stops eating before he is full are freed from many sicknesses." [3]

It reduces the expenses also as Evagrius said, "Do not eat two times a day, your expenditure will not be much, and your mind will not be troubled."

And it multiplies the abundance with which we should satisfy the other hungry. Because one who is being luxurious is not being satisfied by what he owns or that of the others. Fasting is also in order to remember the poor, the needy, the hungry and those in tribulation, as it was asked to a righteous king who fasted a lot why he was hungry, when the borders of the world were his! And he replied that he was afraid that he would forget the hungry if he was satisfied.

[1] These material benefits are found among the ten advantages of hunger in Ethicon 3: III: 3. Cf. Ethicon (ed. BEDJAN), pp. 237-238.

[2] The same idea is expressed in Memra I of Ethicon also. Cf. Ethicon (ed. TEULE), p. 45.

[3] Ethicon (ed. BEDJAN), p. 237.

Source: Chirathilattu Biji Markose: "Prayers and Fasts according to Bar Ebroyo, A Study On the Prayers and Fasts of the Oriental Churches", Lit Publischers, Münster, 2004

See Also:

The Efficacy of Fasting and the Different Categories of Fasting.
According to Bar Ebroyo, the fasting may be defined in terms of time, of the kind of food or in terms of both time and food, and they are the three different categories of fasting.

Study: Monthly fasting may help heart
A study in Utah, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is based, found that people who skipped meals once a month were about 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.

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