Fasting and prayer aren’t just paired by accident in Orthodox life. They’re meant to work together, like your two legs walking up a hill.
When you fast, you get hungry. That’s the point. The Church uses that hunger as a kind of alarm clock for your soul. You feel that empty stomach at 2 PM when you’d normally grab a snack, and it reminds you to pray instead. The physical sensation becomes a prompt. Your body’s saying “I want something,” and you’re learning to redirect that want toward God rather than the break room vending machine.
But it goes deeper than just reminders. Fasting actually changes what happens when you pray. Think about how you feel after Thanksgiving dinner at your aunt’s house, stuffed, sluggish, ready for the couch. You’re not exactly primed for focused prayer in that state. Your body’s running the show. Fasting reverses this. It puts the body in its proper place, not as the enemy (we’re not Gnostics), but as the servant rather than the master.
The Church Fathers talk about fasting as freeing the spirit from what they call “fleshly passions.” That sounds dramatic, but if you’ve ever tried to pray when you’re obsessing about lunch, you know what they mean. Our appetites are loud. They drown out quieter things. Fasting turns down that volume.
There’s a moment in Acts where St. Peter has his vision about the sheet coming down from heaven with all the animals on it. He’s up on the roof praying, and he’s hungry. The text mentions this specifically. His physical hunger during prayer becomes the very context in which God speaks to him about something much bigger than food, about the gospel going to the Gentiles. That’s how fasting and prayer work together. The physical hunger opens up space for spiritual hunger.
The Triodion, which we use during Lent, puts it bluntly: “As we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion.” You can’t just skip the barbecue and call it done. True fasting means pulling back from anger, from gossip, from scrolling through your phone looking for something to be mad about. And you can’t do any of that without prayer. Prayer is what fills the space that fasting creates.
This is why the Church gives us a fasting calendar rather than leaving it up to each person. We fast together, on the same days, following the same rules. It’s corporate. When someone at the plant asks why you’re not eating the boudin they brought in on a Wednesday, you get to explain. That’s part of it too. Fasting without community becomes either pride (“look how spiritual I am”) or just a diet. But fasting with the Church, alongside prayer, becomes something else entirely, a way of humbling yourself before God together with your brothers and sisters.
St. Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, describes how the early Christians would fast and pray with the catechumens before their baptism. The whole community would join in, asking God’s forgiveness for these new believers. Fasting wasn’t individual self-improvement. It was the Church praying with her whole self, body and soul.
Here in Southeast Texas, we’re used to food being central to everything. Church potlucks, family reunions, grabbing tacos after Little League. Food is how we show love. And that’s good, God made food, and it’s a gift. But that’s exactly why fasting is so powerful here. When you say no to your mama’s gumbo on a fast day, you’re saying something. You’re saying that as much as you love her cooking (and you do), you love God more. And then you pray. You take that sacrifice and offer it up.
Fasting also reveals things. You don’t know how much you think about food until you fast. You don’t realize how often you eat out of boredom, stress, or habit rather than actual hunger. These little revelations become material for prayer. “Lord, have mercy on me, I didn’t know I was this controlled by my appetites.” That’s the kind of honest prayer that fasting produces.
The goal isn’t punishment. The Church isn’t trying to make you miserable. Fasting should be joyful, even when it’s hard. You’re training your desires, teaching yourself to want God more than comfort. And prayer is both the means and the end of that training. You fast so you can pray better. You pray so you can fast rightly. They spiral together, lifting you up.
If you’re new to this, start small. Try fasting from meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, and when you feel that pull toward the fridge, say the Jesus Prayer instead: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Do that for a month and you’ll understand the connection better than any article can explain it. Your body will teach your soul, and your soul will teach your body, and both together will learn to pray.
