The Apostles' Fast
After the celebratory period between the Feasts of Pascha and Pentecost the tradition of the Church leads us to enter into the Fast of the Apostles. This season lasts from the Monday after the Feast of Pentecost to the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which occurs on the 29th July in the Western Calendar, and on the 5th Abib in the Coptic Calendar.
Of course the Fast resonates with Scriptural allusions on many levels. There are the verses in Luke 5 which say:
“And He said to them, "Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”
Or there is the description of Jesus Christ, after having received the Holy Spirit in the Jordan, turning to a period of fasting at the beginning of His public ministry.
“Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.”
These, and other passages, make this period of fasting especially appropriate for the time of the year. We experience for ourselves, in the annual cycle of feasts and fasts, the ascension of our Risen Lord, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and now the preparation for ministry and service in the Church and to the world.
The history of this fast is less well documented than that of Great Lent, but the facts which are known are nevertheless of interest and are illuminating. In the first place this fast seems to have been observed by all those Christians who belong to the Apostolic Churches. Indeed in our own times it is still kept with some rigour by the members of the Oriental Orthodox communion, the Eastern Orthodox communion and the Church of the East. One of the earliest references to this season of fasting is found in one of the homilies of Leo of Rome, from the middle of the 5th century. In the West the fast has fallen into disuse, and most Roman Catholics and Anglicans would not even be aware that there had been a fast at this time of the year.
Nevertheless, it is clear that this fast has been observed in all the ancient Christian communities. This suggests that it must be of a very early date. If it had been popularised after Chalcedon amongst the Chalcedonians, then it would be unlikely to have found acceptance among the Oriental Orthodox. If it had been introduced among the Oriental Orthodox then it is unlikely that it would have been accepted by the Chalcedonians and those of the Church of the East. The most likely conclusion is that the fast became universally popular well before the Christological controversies of the 5th century.
It was in Rome that the joint feast of Saints Peter and Paul seems to have first been introduced. This would have been linked to the fact that the bodies of these two Apostles rested together for a while in the shrine on the Via Appia. One of the first monumental Christian buildings erected in Rome under the Emperor Constantine was in fact the Basilica which replaced the early shrine on the Via Appia. The early shrine appears to have been constructed in the middle of the 3rd century, so by the time that it was replaced by Constantine’s Basilica, it had been a focus of pilgrimage for over a hundred years. Before and indeed after this shrine was created, the graves of the two Apostles remained important at the Vatican and on the Via Ostiense. It would seem that it may well have been the heads of the two Apostles which were deposited for a while on the Via Appia, and which created the shrine site, and probably inspired the Feast Day.
Certainly in Rome the joint Feast was kept on the 29th July, as it is celebrated today. This would suggest that the origins of the Feast are found in the West, while the observance of the Fast came to be associated with the Feast both in the West, and as the Feast and the Fast became more widely known, in the East. There is a sense in which the weeks after Pentecost are naturally an appropriate time for reflection and preparation for service, and the propitious development of the Feast at the same time made a natural end-point for the Fast.
There is plenty of time, between 250 and 350 AD for the popularity of the Feast to spread to the East, and for a Fast to become associated with it. Such that by the time of the breach in communion between the various Christian communities in the 5th century the Fast and the Feast were already well established and persisted after communion had been disrupted.
The Apostolic Constitutions, an early collection of canons originating in Syria between 250 and 300 AD, describe a fast after the Feast of Pentecost, associating it with thanksgiving for the gift of the Holy Spirit. It may well be that this tradition of a post-Pentecost fast became more closely linked with the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul as that Feast became more well known in the East.
Coptic tradition describes how the mother of Peter I, Archbishop of Alexandria, prayed before an icon of the Saints on their feast day in about 310 AD asking for the blessing of a child. Though this account was written later, it may well reflect an accurate tradition of the Alexandrian Church, since this Peter was the first archbishop to bear that name, and the remembrance of his mother praying on the Feast of the Apostles might reflect the fact that this joint feast was gaining popularity in Alexandria at the end of the 3rd century.
The Syrian bishop Bar Ebroyo, writing in the 13th century, recounts that the Fast of the Apostle was still observed in the West in his time, from the Monday after Pentecost until the Feast of Peter and Paul. While in the East he suggests that it was observed for up to fifty days. Yet even in the East it seems that this particular Fast has always been observed less strictly than Great Lent. Bar Ebroyo says that it is not compulsory, and this perhaps indicates that it was, in his time, more faithfully observed by monastics rather than lay people.
Bar Ebroyo brings us back to the Scriptures that opened our brief consideration of this Fast. He says,
“Our Lord said to his Apostles: the sons of the bride-chamber cannot fast as long as the bridegroom is with them. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them and then they shall fast, therefore, when our Lord ascended and the Spirit came, the Apostles fasted and this was accepted as a custom, but not prescribed.”
The Fast and the Feast of the Apostles can be considered of great antiquity, and of universal observance in the Apostolic Churches. It is rooted in the time when the Church was united and was able to embrace customs from different places with gratitude and even enthusiasm. Perhaps this season is the happy result of the Eastern tradition of a fast after Pentecost, coming into contact with a Western tradition of the feast of the two Roman Apostles, Peter and Paul.
Whatever the case, it remains for us, a season of preparation for our own ministries and service, in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the light and life of the Risen Lord.
