![]() ![]() Irenaeus of Lyons noted the variety:įor the dispute is not only about the day, but also about the actual form of the fast. ![]() The true origins of LentĬhristian texts as early as the second century talk about fasting leading up to Easter, but different Christian groups appear to observe different types and lengths of fasts, and even within a church there were differences of opinion. Perhaps the most well-known development of fasting practice that emerges after antiquity is the so-called “ holy anorexics” – women, such as Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) and Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), who refused all food but the Eucharist. It is little wonder, then, that later Christians began to associate fasting with being close to God. Jesus’s fast in the desert, then, would have been understood to prepare him to commune with God and to strengthen him against the devil’s temptations. After his period of fasting, an angel tells him divine secrets. In this first century text, Ezra prepares to receive revelations from God by abstaining from food and drink for seven days. ![]() Fasting is also prominent in other texts, closer in date to Jesus’s time, such as 4 Ezra. Moses, for example, fasted prior to going up the mountain to meet with God and receive the Ten Commandments in Exodus 34:28. Not eating and not drinking could be seen as a means of atonement, as with Yom Kippur, but it could also clear the way for an expected meeting with God. ![]()
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