Every fast exists for the sake of a feast. Great Lent is for Pascha; the Nativity Fast for Christmas; the Dormition Fast for the Mother of God's falling-asleep. The fast is the road, not the destination · a *bright sadness*, as the tradition calls it, that opens at its end into joy.
So do not love the fasting for itself, nor dread it as gloom. It is the long, glad preparation of a heart that wants to be ready when the feast comes · to receive the Lord, above all in Holy Communion, with a soul made a little emptier of self and a little readier for Him.