Christian asceticism is above all an ecclesial and not an individual matter. It is the changing of our nature’s individual mode of existence into a personal communion and relationship, a dynamic entry into the community of the life of the body of the Church.
The aim of asceticism is to transfigure our impersonal natural desires and needs into manifestations of the free personal will which brings into being the true life of love.
Thus the instinctive need for food, the greed for the individual’s independent self-preservation, is transfigured in the context of the Church’s fasting : submission to the common practice of the Church becomes paramount, turning it into an act of relationship and communion.
A Christian fasts because in this way he ceases to make the intake of food an autonomous act; he turns it into obedience to the common will and practice of the Church, and subjugates his individual preferences to the Church rules of fasting which determine his choice of food. And obedience freely given always presupposes love: it is always an act of communion.
From \\"Freedom of Morality\\" by Christos Yannaras
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