Asceticism – fasting, self denial, abstinence, taking up one’s cross, following Christ – was in the early days of Christianity seen as a way to imitate the Holy Martyrs whose love for God was not diminished by suffering or death. So as we prepare to enter into Great Lent, we encounter this hymn from the Wednesday of Cheesefare Week:
40 Martyrs of Sebaste
NO TRIBULATION, THREAT, OR HUNGER,
PERSECUTION, FIRE, SWORD, OR SAVAGE BEAST
COULD SEPARATE THE HOLY MARTYRS FROM GOD!
THEY WERE BOUND BY HIS LOVE, AND LIVED AS EXILES IN THIS WORLD!
THEIR SUFFERING HAS WON THEM A GLORIOUS PRIZE:
THEY INHERITED THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM,
WHERE THEY CEASELESSLY PRAY FOR OUR SOULS!
Self denial, abstinence, fasting – asceticism makes us ask: do we love the world more than we love God?
(* “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”)
