The Antinomy of Feast and Fast: A Reassessment of Post-Communion Fasting in the Byzantine Liturgy

Eucharistic celebration and fasting avowedly comprise two central actions of the Church, with roots dating back two thousand years. Certainly the value of fasting, aside from its ascetical significance and as the principal means, as St. Basil of Caesarea insists, of remedying Adam and Eve’s “violation of disobedience”, is all too frequently associated with holy communion in a causal-relational sense, specifically, as a preparation for the reception of the Eucharist. While ample evidence from antiquity confirms that the first Christians did fast weekly and communed regularly, the relationship between fasting and the Eucharist was nowhere near as pronounced in the first century as it became after the fourth, with the emergence of monasticism and the subsequent formal establishment of ascetical fasting practices and a populated liturgical calendar. Such developments inevitably demanded a clarification of this complex relationship but also created an uneasy and oftentimes incompatible symbiosis of feast and fast. Post-Eucharistic abstinence, especially during Lent, conflicted with the Lord’s “forbiddance” of the banquet guests to fast when their bridegroom is with them (cf. Mk 2.19-20), thus reworking the primitive Church’s implicit acceptance of this delicate balance. In brief, how does one legitimize post-communion fasting and does this redefine its function and purpose, not to mention complicate or even restrict communion practices?This paper seeks to explore these critical questions by examining historical and liturgical sources that make reference to post-communion fasting and addressing how the Church assessed this antinomy in each case, providing guidelines for contemporary practice and furthering future discussion.