Baha’i Perspectives

Archive for the tag 'fasting'

A Special Virtue in Every Hour

nadim February 28th, 2008

Here’s wishing all fellow fasters a refreshing and reinvigorating fasting period. To be able to spend this time in the shadow of the Shrines and gardens here on Mount Carmel, where the great Messengers and Prophets of the past lived, breathed, worshipped and yes, fasted, is indeed a blessing — and I plan to treasure every moment of it.

The fasting period, which lasts nineteen days starting as a rule from the second of March every year and ending on the twentieth of the same month, involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise till sunset. It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires.

(Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian, p. 27)

Thou hast endowed every hour of these days with a special virtue, inscrutable to all except Thee, Whose knowledge embraceth all created things.

Glory be to Thee, O Lord my God! These are the days whereon Thou hast bidden all men to observe the fast, that through it they may purify their souls and rid themselves of all attachment to anyone but Thee, and that out of their hearts may ascend that which will be worthy of the court of Thy majesty and may well beseem the seat of the revelation of Thy oneness.

(Baha’u'llah, Compilations, Baha’i Prayers)