Why does the Creator call us to practice the way of the angels?

When humans enslaved their souls to their bellies, they were deprived of the Garden of Eden. However, God’s desire is not to call the children of Adam to an earthly garden but to a heavenly paradise, where we will not need either food or drink. Thus, fasting is a sign of the believer’s joyful acceptance of this calling.

St. Gregory of Nyssa says, “As the resurrection holds forth to us a life equal with the angels, and with the angels there is no food, there is sufficient ground for believing that man,

417 St. Basil of Caesarea, On Fasting and Feasts 1.6 (PP 50:61).

418 St. Basil of Caesarea, On Fasting and Feasts 1.7 (PP 50:63).

who will live in like fashion with the angels, will be released from such a function [from slavery to food and drink].”⁴¹⁹

St. Basil the Great says, “It is because we did not fast that we were banished from paradise. So let us fast that we may return to it,”⁴²⁰ and, “for fasting restores to us the losses that were incurred by Adam’s failure to fast and reconciles us with God.”

St. Jerome says, “They despised angels’ food, and sighed for the flesh of Egypt. Moses for forty days and forty nights fasted on Mount Sinai, and showed even then that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word of God. He says to the Lord, ‘the people are full and make idols.’ Moses with empty stomach received the law written with the finger of God. The people that ate and drank and rose up to play fashioned a golden calf, and preferred an Egyptian ox to the majesty of the Lord. The toil of so many days perished through the fulness of a single hour. Moses boldly broke the tables: for he knew that drunkards cannot hear the word of God (Deut. 32:15).”⁴²¹

St. Philoxenus of Mabbug says, “Why are you defeated by the stomach like an infant and become a mockery by which a childhood’s passion will laugh at you? … It is not the fruit that Eve had eaten that gave birth to death, but the desire of the fruit gave birth to death. If [Eve] had kept the law and had not eaten with desire at that time, how many times afterward would she have eaten of it and not have been blamed, when simply she would have approached it like any other tree?”⁴²²