The Fast of Intercession

 
"Not such a fast I have chosen, says the Lord, but loose all bonds of iniquity, separate knots of violent covenants, send forth the shattered in release and all wicked contracts tear asunder."--Is 58:6

When we fast, we are not to merely refrain from food, though it is praiseworthy to do so to control our passions and offer our sacrifices to God; we are also to do good to our neighbor, as the Spirit spoke through the prophet Isaiah.  We are to fast from wickedness and fast for good, for the more exact fast, the true fast, is to abstain from sin, as St. John Chrysostom remind us, and while we abstain from sin we should also actively do good; thus the Lord directs us to do good for our neighbor during our fasts, expanding the normal definition of almsgiving, calling us to all of the corporal works of mercy.  Yet, are there not other ways we can assist our neighbor during the Fast, in addition to the physical assistance?  If we do not have a brother bound in wicked contract, if we do not keep men bound by iniquity, and thus we cannot release them, what can this verse mean to us?

The Parasite of Curiosity

A vice that was oft-discussed in olden times seems to have become eradicated today...at least in the popular mind.  I have heard and read very little in contemporary Christianity that discusses the vice of curiosity.  Yes, it is a vice when taken to an extreme (which it easily tends to): it is an excessive love of novelty that includes a disdain for what is older, more common, more traditional.  (Another meaning would be the curiosity of a busybody who is eager for gossip, but that form of curiosity seems more commonly condemned than this one.)  It may manifest as simply an overwhelming preference for living spiritual writers than sainted ones or for modern ideas over ancient ones; it may also manifest in an obsessive drive to be always learning more by learning broadly.  This latter form, I fear, is the least recognized and least condemned, and it is incredibly easy to fall into, especially with our current "Information Age."  In addition to the disdain for the old, this form of curiosity can also lead to dissipation: one can exhaust all one's energies merely in searching out new information.  Our inter-linked websites nowadays are fertile ground for growing this vice: when researching one subject, a link spurs an interest in another subject, which one then researches, which leads to more links, eventually creating a whirlpool that drains all of one's time and energy.  (I am thinking, as prime examples, of sites such as Wikipedia and TV Tropes.)  In general, this form of curiosity is about desiring to ever know more and to be researching new things but doing so to the point where deeper study of things one knew before is ignored; often, this can lead to a mere search for a breadth of knowledge without truly digging into the depths of a topic.  At its most vicious, of course, it leads one to prefer the quest for novelty and new knowledge to the deepening of one's relationship with the Lord.