“The Supper at Emmaus: On Fasting”
2026 Beatrice Institute Lenten Campaign
“My favorite part of the BI fellowship was sitting down and sharing a meal, and just having heart-to-heart conversation. It wasn’t a superficial thing. What really stood out to me with Beatrice Institute was the environment it created that allowed you to show your heart to those around you.”
Mid Fifteenth-Century Venetian, Artist Unknown
“So run to greet the cheerful fast. Fasting is an ancient gift, but it is not worn out and antiquated. Rather, it is continually made new, and still is coming into bloom.”
Basil of Caesarea, "On Fasting"
THE MEDITATION
The Supper at Emmaus…
Our Lord—the hero in disguise—walks with his disciples, keeping secret the eucatastrophic news of the Resurrection. Arriving at their humble lodgings, he finally reveals himself over a meal only to vanish from their sight...The artist above seems to capture the moment the disciples recognize they are communing with God, while also placing the supper in a natural landscape, a captivating wilderness of mountain peaks. Creation restored perhaps?
A meal is a sacred thing in the Bible: the Israelites celebrating Passover, God feasting with the elders on Mount Sinai, Jesus sanctifying the wedding feast at Cana with his first public miracle.
If sacred meal, then, is the teleological form of communion with God, why did Christ give us an example of fasting to follow?
Wisdom from Basil…
Basil of Caesarea—writing in the fourth century—calls the practice of fasting a great Christian heirloom, harkening back to the primordial fast, "as old as mankind itself...given as a law in Paradise"—that is, the dictate in the garden not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.
Fasting is an original state of mankind, a trust we broke, an armor against sin.
So every Lent, the Body of Christ returns explicitly to stricter habits of fasting. However, like so much of the action of the Christian life, we don't just do it for its own sake.
The command to fast from the Tree of Knowledge is to safeguard the feast of the Tree of Life.
Why we fast…
Fast is the means and co-requisite of feast.
This is why we fast: to be ourselves guests at the supper at Emmaus and, even more fully, at the heavenly banquet. There, the bridegroom will be eternally resurrected, and his disciples will have no cause to fast. (Matthew 9:15)
THE ACTION
We have a a request for you!
At BI, we pair our seminars with a fellowship dinner so that, in the spirit of Emmaus, Christ may be revealed in the discussions and relationships these meals foster.
You can help us source quality, local food for our undergraduates.
$20 is a fellow's dinner
$240 feeds a whole cohort
$1500 feeds a cohort for a whole semester
Give what you can!
Whatever the quantity, your tax deductible gift will go towards Beatrice Institute and our mission to create vibrant spaces for the Christian intellectual tradition within our undergraduate, faculty, and public communities.
Thank you to all who have already donated to support Beatrice Institute this Lent!