A Fuller Understanding of Chastity: Whole-Mindedness

"If one does not reduce this term, as is so often and erroneously done, only to its sexual connotations, it is understood as the postitive counterpart of sloth. The exact and full translation of the Greek sofrosini and the Russian tselomudryie ought to be whole-mindedness. Sloth is, first of all, dissipation, the brokenness of our vision and energy, the inability to see the whole. Its opposite then is precisely wholeness. If we usually mean by chastity the virtue opposed to sexual depravity, it is because the broken character of our existence is nowhere better manifested than in sexual lust—the alienation of the body from the life and control of the spirit."

 

–Fr. Alexander Schmemann in The Winter Pascha, p. 36

Strictness or Laxity in Fasting

The Orthodox Church's guidelines for fasting are based on rules used by monastics and are applied differently from church to church, locale to locale, even person to person. Because of this variability, questions often arise around what is permissible and what is not. One such question about oil in an Orthodox Facebook group recently garnered the usual opposing arguments—1) at the time and place of the canons' composing, olive oil was the only oil available, therefore, one ought to abstain from all oil, and 2) fasting shouldn't be about slavish legalism; don't worry so much about every jot and tittle.

Steve Robinson wrote this wise reply:

Funny how this works: People who tend to be "strict with the canons" will say regarding oil, "The SPIRIT of the canon would mean NO oil at all", but if someone appeals to the "spirit of the canon to RELAX a "rule", they will cry "FOUL!".... The canons are like the scripture: they need interpreting by the Church and "the Church" has not universally declared coconut oil to be forbidden either in reality or in spirit. What it HAS declared universally is that strictness or laxity can both be signs of spiritual disease that needs to be addressed by a spiritual guide. [emphasis mine]