The Nativity Fast serves to bless the conclusion of the year with a mystical renewal of spiritual unity with God and preparation for our celebration of the Nativity of Christ.  

St. Leo the Great wrote, “The custom of abstinence is fixed for four periods, so that over the course of the year we might recognize that we are ever in need of cleansing and that in the distracted bustle of life we must ever strive through fasting and acts of charity to extirpate sin, which multiplies through corruption of our flesh and through the uncleanness of our desires.” 

According to Leo the Great,the Nativity Fast is a sacrifice to God in thanks for the harvest. 

“Just as the Lord has been generous to us with bounties of the fruits of the earth,” wrote the Holy Hierarch, “so should we be generous to the poor during this Fast.” 

According to Symeon of Thessalonika, “the Fast of the Nativity Quadregesima depicts the Fast observed by Moses, who, after fasting for forty days and forty nights, received the words of God inscribed on stone tablets.   And we, fasting for forty days, contemplate and receive the living Word from the Virgin, inscribed not on stones, but incarnate and born, and will commune of His Divine Flesh.” 

This Fast was established so that through repentance, prayer and fasting, we might cleanse ourselves before the day of the Nativity of Christ, so that with pure heart, soul, and body, we might thereby piously welcome the Son of God, come to earth.  In addition to the usual gifts and offerings, we bring our pure, heart-felt desire to follow His teachings. 

God grant that we might all spend the salvific days of the Nativity Fast in a manner especially beneficial to our souls.