WHAT TRUE FASTING MEANS

Let not the mouth only fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of your body. Let the hands fast by being pure of avarice. Let the feet fast by ceasing from running to forbidden spectacles. Let the eyes fast by being taught never to fix themselves rudely upon handsome countenances. For looking is the food of the eyes; . . . For it would be an example of the highest absurdity to abstain from meats and from food because of the fast, but with the eyes to feed on what is forbidden. . . . Let the ears also fast. The fasting of the ear is not to receive evil-speakings and calumnies. Let the mouth, too, fast from foul words and from revilings.

(St. John Chrysostom, On the Statues, III, 11)

ftentimes have I quoted the words of Saint Seraphim, and once again shall I mention them. Once there came to him a mother who was concerned about how she might arrange the best possible marriage for her young daughter. When she came to Saint Seraphim for advice, he said to her: “Before all else, ensure that he, whom your daughter chooses as her companion for life, keeps the fasts. If he does not, then he is not a Christian, whatever he may consider himself to be.” You see how the greatest saint of the Russian Church, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, a man who, better than we, knew what Orthodoxy is, spoke concerning the fasts?

(Saint Philaret the New Confessor, Metropolitan of New York, Homily on the Sunday of St. John of the Ladder)