www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology kind of urgent question

Hello, I'd greatly appreciate any info on this I found out something I didn't know, which is that Eastern Catholics not only abstain from certain food during Great Lent but also only have one meal a day.I did have some questions though about this and I'm not sure what to do in certain situations...

- can you still have water during the day? What about tea? For example at work
- how strict is this? If you have a snack at lunch is it a sin or does it depend on the reason? Is being really hungry and tired at work a reason?
- do most lay people get permission from their priest to eat a snack or two during the day or a meal? I read the fast came from a monastery.. I'd like to follow it but what if I'm not strong enough?
- if you are visiting family and they are not following the fast and you are given 3 meals and meat should you just accept? Would that be charity and not a sin?

And lastly if you are having Communion in the evening (Mass at 7 pm or later) can you have some tea in the morning and eat after the Mass? Or even have a snack in the morning?

I keep wondering about these things and I'm having trouble finding info from websites. I know they're trying not to be legalistic but when you're new to it and trying to figure it out with no guidance its too confusing. I'm Russian Catholic with no parish. Thank you!

I also read certain days have a strict fast and others are just no oil... So on a day like Friday, would you actually cook the vegetables etc?

What if bread has oil as part of the ingredients?

can you still have water during the day? What about tea? For example at work

Water and tea do not break this fast (though they do technically break the Communion fast. However, it is a common mitigation of the Communion fast to allow water.)

- how strict is this? If you have a snack at lunch is it a sin or does it depend on the reason? Is being really hungry and tired at work a reason?

It's not strict at all in the moral sense. The fasting rules are an aspiration in their fullness... a discipline for growing in virtue, not a penal system. See this important article "Fasting for Non Monastics [pravoslavie.ru]".

- do most lay people get permission from their priest to eat a snack or two during the day or a meal? I read the fast came from a monastery.. I'd like to follow it but what if I'm not strong enough?

See the article above. Yes, most people mitigate both the quantity rules and the rules about the types of foods and this mitigation is well within the tradition. It is so well within the tradition that it is probably not even neccesary to have a specific permission, though I, for instance, did discuss what kind of fast I would keep with my priest.

- if you are visiting family and they are not following the fast and you are given 3 meals and meat should you just accept? Would that be charity and not a sin?

Generally speaking, that would be acceptable (that is, so long as you are not accepting from a motive of gluttony, but that's not what it sounds like) and there is even a Russian tradition of mitigating the fast in this way when you are in the places where non-believers live as it is difficult or impossible to keep the fast there.

For the assuaging of anyone's conscience, the Eastern Code of Canon Law provides a rule that is applicable in your situation:


As a Russian Catholic living in the United States you are outside of the territorial boundaries of the Russian Catholic Church and can adopt the fasting rules of the place that you live, that is the modern Roman rules, which are quite minimal. Then anything you do on top of that would be a bonus.

Ah... and oil:

I also read certain days have a strict fast and others are just no oil... So on a day like Friday, would you actually cook the vegetables etc?

Again... there are levels of strictness. The strictest monastic practice was called "dry eating," where there was neither cooking in oil nor even any form of cooking at all (baking bread, however, didn't count as cooking in this sense). Practically, most people don't abstain from all forms of oil, but just abstain from using olive oil (and of course butter and lard), but will use canola, peanut, corn, etc. oils. (Many will also, however, not eat "deep-fried" foods.)

As Athanasios of Parios wrote [johnsanidopoulos.com] in response to a related question, "it is well known that with olive oil we are able to cook innumerable and delicious foods" ... which gives the reason for abstaining from this particularly tasty oil.

What if bread has oil as part of the ingredients?

See above.

Thanks for the helpful response! its finally more clear to me. I guess where it says that faithful are obliged to follow the fasts, it is assumed that the fast might be mitigated for certain reasons? It would be ideal to have one meal in the evening and nothing before except water or tea, if anything, but just in case if a person is too weak to work etc.