Word Finder - fasting

definition

To restrict one’s personal consumption, generally of food, but sometimes other things, in various manners (totally, temporally, by avoiding particular items), often for religious or medical reasons.

example

Muslims fast during Ramadan and Catholics during Lent.

definition

Abstinence from food

From the first, fasting was practised in the church for similar reason.

In this season fasting played a part, but it was not universally nor rigorously enforced.

Fasting is frequent and severe.

Your body has been in fasting mode for approximately eight hours while you were sleeping.

The king consents, the saint is acclaimed, the bodies of the thirty-seven martyrs solemnly interred, and the king, after fasting five, and listening to Gregory's homilies for sixty days, is healed.

Dispensations from fasting were, however, given in case of illness.

We come to a third widespread reason for fasting, common among savages.

Among the North American Indians ecstatic fasting is regularly practised.

The American Diabetes Association recommends that a random plasma glucose, fasting plasma glucose, or oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) be used for diagnosis of diabetes.

The 41st canon of the council of Carthage enacted that the sacraments of the altar should be received fasting, except on the anniversary of the Lord's supper.

They should be dissolved in warm water and taken in the morning, fasting.

Not a few saints were rewarded for their fasting by glimpses of the beatific vision.

From the 6th century the season was kept as a period of fasting as strict as that of Lent; but in the Anglican and Lutheran churches the rule is now relaxed.

Visions are vouchsafed only to those who to prayer have added fasting.

In the discipline of the Christian Church abstinence is the term for a less severe form of Fasting.

In many ways he was a typical Mahommedan, fiercely hostile towards unbelievers - "Let us purge the air of the air they breathe" was his aim for the demons of the Cross, - intensely devout and regular in prayers and fasting.

The 6th of April was kept as a day of fasting and prayer, and the 1st of July was thus set apart in order to seek divine guidance for the approaching conference.

Fish were supposed to be born in the water without sexual connexion, and on the basis of this old physiological fallacy the Cathars equally with the Catholic framed their rule of fasting.

This is why the Zulus and other primitive races distrust a medicine man who is not an ascetic and lean with fasting.

He was converted by a hermit; but as he had neither the gift of fasting nor that of prayer, he decided to devote himself to a work of charity and set himself to carry wayfarers over a bridgeless river.

Dancing and festivities are forbidden, fasting enjoined and purple vestments are worn in the church services.

He exhorted his hearers to prepare themselves by fasting and prayer for the danger which menaced their civil and religious liberties, and refused even to speak to the courtier who came down to remodel the corporation of Bedford, and who, as was supposed, had it in charge to offer some municipal dignity to the bishop of the Baptists.

Great stress is laid upon virginity (although there is not a sign of monasticism), upon fasting (especially for the bishop), upon the regular attendance of the whole clerical body and the " more perfect " of the laity at the hours of prayer.

All that night he is said to have remained in deep meditation under the Bo tree; and the orthodox Buddhists believe that for seven times seven nights and days he continued fasting near the spot, when the archangel Brahma, came and ministered to him.

As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them.

Saul and Barnabas equally are separated for a certain missionary work by imposition of hands with prayer and fasting, and are so sent forth by the Holy Ghost.

To refuse to submit to fasting was considered indelibly disgraceful, and was one of the things which legally degraded a man by reducing or destroying his honour-value.

The law said "he who does not give a pledge to fasting is an evader of all; he who disregards all things shall not be paid by God or man."

If a person fasting in accordance with law died during.

Fasting could be stopped by paying the debt, giving a pledge, or submitting to the decision of a Brehon.

A creditor fasting after a reasonable offer of settlement had been made to him forfeited his claim.

In a looser sense the word is employed to denote abstinence from certain kinds of food merely; and this meaning, which in ordinary usage is probably the more prevalent, seems also to be at least tolerated by the Church of England when it speaks of " fast or abstinence days," as if fasting and abstinence were synonymous.

For the physiology of fasting, see Dietetics; Nutrition; also Corpulence.

In the spring of 1869 this was tried on the person of a " fasting girl " in South Wales.

This canon teacheth so evidently how fasting was used in the primitive church as by words it cannot be more plainly expressed " (Of Good Works; and first, of Fasting.) 2 As indeed they are, etymologically; but, prior to the Reformation, a conventional distinction between abstinentia and jejunium naturale had long been recognized.

It is suggested that the fasting which was at first the natural and inevitable result of such sacrifice on behalf of the dead may eventually have come to be regarded as an indispensable concomitant of all sacrifice, and so have survived as a wellestablished usage long after the original cause had ceased to operate.'

In the Westminster Assembly's Larger Catechism fasting is mentioned among the duties required by the second commandment.

The practice of stated fasting was not in any other case enjoined by the law; and it is generally understood to have been forbidden on Sabbath.

The only other provision about fasting in the Pentateuch is of a regulative nature, Numb.

The history of Israel from Moses to Ezra furnishes a large number of instances in which the fasting instinct was obeyed both publicly and privately, locally and nationally, under the influence of sorrow, or fear, or passionate desire.

The second book (Seder Moed) of the Mishna contains two tractates bearing upon the subject of fasting.

They used to attend the temple in rotation, and be present at the sacrifices; and as this duty fell to each in his turn, the men of the class or family which he represented were expected in their several cities and places of abode to engage themselves in religious exercises, and especially in fasting.

It ought to be borne in mind that the Aramaic portion of the Megillath Taanith (a document considerably older than the treatises in the Mishna) gives a catalogue only of the days on which fasting was forbidden.

He never formally forbade fasting, but neither did He ever enjoin it.

The words which appear to encourage fasting in i Cor.

Fasting in the stricter sense was not unknown; but it is certain that it did not at first occupy nearly so prominent a place in Christian ritual as that to which it afterwards attained.

As early as the time of Tertullian it was also usual for communicants to prepare themselves by fasting for receiving the eucharist.

In that treatise (c. 15) he approves indeed of the church practice of not fasting on Saturdays and Sundays (as elsewhere, De corona, c. 3, he had expressed his concurrence in the other practice of observing the entire period between Easter and Pentecost as a season of joy); but otherwise he evinces great dissatisfaction with the indifference of the church as to the number, duration and severity of her fasts.'

The church thus came to be more and more involved in discussions as to the number of days to be observed, especially in " Lent," as fast days, as to the hour at which a fast ought to terminate (whether at the 3rd or at the 9th hour), as to the rigour with which each fast ought to be observed (whether by abstinence from flesh merely, abstinentia, or by abstinence from lacticinia, xerophagia, or by literal jejunium), and as to the penalties by which the laws of fasting ought to be enforced.

The synod of Hippo (393 A.D.) enacted that the sacrament of the altar should always be taken fasting, except on the Thursday before Easter.