As is customary in many Egyptian households, the day before Great Lent is an occasion of great feasting, whereby the very last remains of all non-fasting foods are consumed in a joyous celebration. On one such eve of Great Lent, Azer arrived home from primary school and walked into the dining room to behold a lavish and exorbitant feast. “Why should we have an abundance of food,” questioned Azer, “while others have plain bread?” His family hardly expected such a reaction from a ravenous schoolboy. Azer turned to his mother in disappointment and added, “How can we eat this luxurious food while a poor Kurdish family lives next to us?” Their neighbors were an elderly Turkish Muslim family that had no source of income and survived on the bare necessities. Encouraged, conceivably by his mother’s silent dismay, and with delight returning to his face, he continued, “It would be good for us to offer them this food for Christ’s sake. Tomorrow we will fast and be satisfied with a modest meal.” According to the memoir, though surprised and famished by this point, his family members could not withstand Azer’s integrity and fervor. His parents immediately gathered their feast and brought it to their Kurdish neighbors, whose only response to the act of generosity was to kiss and bless the young Azer.

A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971)
Fr. Daniel Fanous

The Hebrews ate the flesh of the sacrificed animals; this was an image of our spiritual food. Now we eat, not the bodies of sacrificed animals, but the Most-pure Body and Blood of the Lord, throughout the whole earth. Therefore he who often communicates of the Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ should not require to eat any animal food. Why should I require any animal flesh when I partake of the Most-pure Body and the Most-pure Blood—these life-giving Mysteries of my God? Do they not contain sufficient life, peace, joy, spiritual and bodily strength for me? Can I not be satisfied with only vegetable and fish food, which is much lighter for me?

What is there wonderful in the Lord’s offering you His Body and Blood as food and drink? He Who gave you as food the flesh of the animals He created, has finally given you Himself as food and drink. He who fed you at your mother’s breasts now feeds you with His own Body and Blood, in order that in the same manner as with your mother’s milk—you absorbed it into yourself in your infancy certain of your mother’s qualities—her spirit—so you may absorb into yourself, together with the Body and Blood of Christ the Savior, His spirit and life. Or as previously in your infancy you were fed by your mother and lived by her—by her milk—so now, having grown up and become a sinful man, you are fed with the Blood of your Life-giver, in order that through this you may live and spiritually grow into a man of God, a holy man. In short, that as you were then your mother’s son, so now you may become God’s child, brought up and fed with His Body and Blood, and, above all, with His Spirit (for His Body and Blood are spirit and life); and that you should become an heir of the heavenly kingdom, for which reason you were created, and for which you live.

Children! remember that Jesus Christ so loves you that He calls you several times every year to His Divine and Life-giving table, at which He gives you, as food, His own Divine, Most-pure Body; and, as drink, His Divine, Most-pure, Life-giving Blood, in order that you should live not only here temporarily, but also in heaven eternally, endlessly: and therefore be very, very thankful to your Creator and Savior for His immeasurable love to you, to your parents, to your brothers and sisters, and to all men.

—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

When asked to bless the lavish and opulent banquet set before him he struggled to hide his distress and whispered to one of his disciples, “My son…is that the food of monks?” Without causing a scene he quietly dispatched the same disciple to source some falafel and salad, to the awe and confusion of onlookers. It is little wonder that his brother, Hanna, ended his memoirs with the words: “Becoming pope did not change him.”

A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971)
Fr. Daniel Fanous

According to his closest disciple who served him while patriarch, Fr Raphael Ava Mina, Kyrillos’ diet was meager and austere. When he broke his fast around midday—having started the day with psalmody at three in the morning—it would inevitably be with a piece of bread (qorban) and dukkah. With much pleading, he could occasionally be convinced to add a few small spoons of beans. Often Kyrillos would be delayed by meetings and then he would have his breakfast only after three in the afternoon. For lunch, he would usually have some dried bread with a small number of cooked vegetables—but, Fr Raphael recalls, he would never actually eat the vegetables, but only dip his bread in their sauce. Before he slept, he would usually be satisfied with some fruit or bread at most. “I never saw him touch a piece of chicken or meat, or even have a sip of milk.” That was during the non-fasting days. In fasting times, especially that of Lent and the Theotokos fast, even though he had been awake since the earliest hours of the morning, he would eat only once later in the evening.At one point during the fifty days of Resurrection, Kyrillos gave his regular cook a few days of leave, upon which Fr Raphael, who in his own words “did not know how to cook,” thought to take care of the kitchen. Each evening he would lay out roasted chicken, a few small pieces of meat, rice, bread and cheese; only to find the chicken and meat untouched, with the bread and cheese eaten. Given the poor refrigeration of the day, each evening would see a new meal largely wasted. “I need to tell you something…I don’t think he likes chicken,” the disciple recalls telling the cook when he returned. Confused, the cook rebuked Fr Raphael, saying, “He would never eat it like that….You need to cut chicken so fine and mix it with the rice so that he cannot see it!” A man of sixty, physically large and athletic, and yet they had to trick him, lest he eat only bread and cumin.

A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902–1971)
Fr. Daniel Fanous

“Abba Doulas said ‘One day when we were walking beside the sea I was thirsty and I said to Abba Bessarion, “Father, I am very thirsty.” He said a prayer and said to me, “Drink some of the sea water.” The water tasted sweet when I drank some. I even poured some into the leather bottle for fear of being thirsty later on. Seeing this, the old man asked me why I was taking some. I said to him, “Forgive me, it is for the fear of being thirsty later on.” Then the old man said, “God is here, God is there, God is everywhere.”

—Abba Bessarion

Secondly, eat not hastily and impatiently, but with such decent and timely action that your eating be a human act, subject to deliberation and choice; and that you may consider in the eating, whereas he that eats hastily cannot consider particularly of the circumstances, degrees, and little accidents and chances that happen in his meal, but may contract many little indecencies, and be suddenly surprised.

—Rev. Jeremy Taylor, On Christian Sobriety -Measures of temperance in eating..,The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 3. THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING AND DYING….: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying

make nature to be your limit.

—Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1

But go to the crib, thou glutton, and there it will be found that when the charger is clean, yet nature’s rules were not prevaricated; the beast eats up all his provisions because they are natural and simple ; or if he leaves any, it is because he desires no more than till his needs be served ; and neither can a man (unless he be diseased in body or in spirit, in affection or in habit) eat more of natural and simple food than to the satisfaction of his natural necessities. He that drinks a draught or two of water and cools his thirst, drinks no more till his thirst returns; but he that drinks wine, drinks again longer than it is needful, even so long as it is pleasant. Nature best provides for herself when she spreads her own table ; but when men have gotten superinduced habits, and new necessities, art that brought them in must maintain them, but “wantonness and folly wait at the table, and sickness and death take away.”

—Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1

” This hunger must be natural,” not artificial and provoked ; for many men make necessities to themselves, and then think they are bound to provide for them. 

—Rev. Jeremy Taylor, The House of Feasting The Whole Works of the Rt. Rev. Jeremy Taylor, Volume 1