www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology I'm very confused

LittleFlower,

Your Latin devotions are very much appreciated! The Church is much richer because of them. And I particularly like your screenname in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux.

Alexis

Just eat the stuff with oil and go without meat, fish, milk, etc. The fast should be spiritual not legalistic. I can easily avoid fish and seafood (I don't eat meat anyway so that bit is easy) through the entire Lent, but like you, I am often in situations where I can't control what I eat, so I don't beat myself up if I have something that may have been cooked in butter or whatever.

The important thing is am I getting anything spiritual from it? This is where you really need a spiritual director who is au fait with eastern spirituality to discern whether you are getting anything from the fast and counsel you appropriately.

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

Not to get into a full blown political discussion. Little Flowers situation is what upsets me about the Catholic Church. The Curia is so worried about upsetting certain Eastern Eparchs that they instead have us Eastern Catholics languish without proper direction.

They further compound this by tying Eastern Catholics without hierarchs to Latin Bishops instead of to Eparchs within the same Holy Tradition.

As I have said for since I have been on this site. If the Syriac Catholic Church can be an Eparchy with only 6 Churches throughout North America, why can't the Russian Catholics have an Exarch to help take care of their needs?

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Yuhannon,

It's a matter of not ticking off the Patriarch of Moscow. At present, Moscow hasn't gone out of its way to reclaim parishes that have "left" Russian Orthodoxy and "Joined" the Russian Catholic Church. Many exist under a legal limbo in Russia... If an exarch for the Russian Catholic Church is appointed, it's been implied that the MP might no longer "ignore" these communities, and recover its properties.

Note that, however, their Roman Bishops are permitted to say the HDL in these parishes as their proper hierarch, and issue the antimensia for these parishes and their priests.

Further, there is always the fear that an eparch might ignore "Nec plus, nec minus, nec aliter."

I'm glad to hear that your spiritual director is in agreement with my canon law teacher that you do not need to follow the fasts of the Russian Greek Catholic Church you belong to canonically, and rather can "adopt fully for themselves the feast days and days of penance which are in force where they are staying" that is, your Latin parish.

I hope that can settle that particular concern for you. I know you've been struggling with it for a long time here and in the other forum.

I'm glad you also got confirmation from the bishop for what what others have told you, that there is no need for you to make a canonical change to the Latin Church in order for you to fully participate there, as you have said you wish to continue doing.

I hope this frees you up to focus on the practices of your Latin Church parish. Great Lent is such a rich time to be doing so.

Dear Little Flower,

Most Orthodox I know, both here and in Europe, do not fast from oil...that is, in this day and age, primarily a monastic discipline and even monastics do not insist that their spiritual children fast from it. It would be virtually impossible for most of us to fast from oil!!

In this country, when not eating and preparing food at home, it can be difficult to fast, and especially from dairy and from cheese. One young woman I know who embarked on her first Lenten fast said that she ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the whole period because she couldn't think of anything else!!

On the other hand, I had linked a vegan website somewhere here last week that lists all the vegan foods available at fast food and chain restaurants throughout the country!

link here

I am not your spiritual director ofcourse, but one way that many people have started getting used to the idea of fasting for Lent (including yours truly) is to abstain from only meat. That is actually not that difficult a thing to do (though it might be in the beginning for some people.) Maybe you might want to try that? It is also the suggestion many priests and spiritual fathers give their spiritual children who ask about fasting.

In Christ,
Alice

Dear Little Flower,
It is my opinion that you remain as an Orthodox in Communion with Rome. You are free as an individual to worship in any of the Churches which are in communion with Rome and even in an Orthodox Church when this is not possible.
I as a priest when I am traveling often attend the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church.

As to fasting in a family situation you can still keep the fast as best you can even though your family does not follow it. (I lived in a home with Protestant family members while still keeping the fasting regulations.)

I know that this requires great self control but it makes the fast even that much more of a discipline. .

Blessed Lent!
Stephanos I

I'm suddenly recalling advice given twenty years ago to a lass that spoke with her physician about becoming vegetarian: wait until you're out of college; you can't healthily do so in (an American) college cafeteria. (Heck, keeping a healthy omnivorous diet is really rough there . . . )

If you're eating at a college, you're going to need to keep the spirit, not the letter, of the fast. The, uhm, quality of the foods is an issue, as is how they're cooked. (insert flashback . . . hawk: "what are those" ; cafeteria lady, offended, "green beans; you known that" ; hawk "but they're yellow!", and so forth).

Fasting is an exercise in restraint, and is for a purpose. That purpose is not to get sick over legalistic rules. Do what you can given your circumstances, but keep in mind that you're fasting from foods, not health. Come to think of it, college cafeteria food probably qualifies as fasting to start with

I agree completely with keep the spirit, not the letter, of the fast for someone without experience and without any catechesis as an Eastern Catholic, nor in her prior life as Orthodox by Baptism/Initiation only, basically never having lived the Orthodox tradition.

Many if not most college cafeterias now have full vegetarian meals options, not necessarily vegan, as well as focusing more on organic and sustainable practices. Many campuses have a lot of vegan students now, too. Things have improved.

LittleFlower-
Off topic -- you might enjoy reading Katie Gulas' blog "Blog of the East" [blogoftheeast.blogspot.com]. She mentioned here that she's started writing it again during Great Lent, and she mentioned it today of Light of the East radio. Katie is a Byzantine Catholic college student. She's a residential student at her college. You can hear her talking some about her experience at her college and about her blog on podcast #283 [catholicradiointernational.com] when it goes up, probably mid week.

Hello Fellow Canuck, sorry i couldn't resist eh?. I have enclosed the link to the EC Eparchy website of Canada . It also lists additonal links to other Eastern Rite Churches in Canada.

http://www.ucet.ca/



marusia