Holy Week

Holy Week is marked in the monastic account by a demanding fast that sharply narrows ordinary eating and drinking. Its rules distinguish the days of the week, culminating in Good Friday’s complete abstinence from food and a restricted meal on Saturday.## The Holy Week FastFrom Monday until Saturday evening, six whole days, nothing is cooked. The monks are to live on bread and water, and sparingly at that; if possible, they should not eat every day, following the severity prescribed for the first week of Lent. The rule turns the week into a sustained discipline of deprivation rather than a single observance.## The Fast’s Strictest DaysGood Friday is the sharpest point of abstinence: nothing is eaten. On Holy Saturday the fast continues until three o’clock, after which the monks take a little bread and water and drink one cup of wine. Holy Thursday, by contrast, permits wine and either a cooked dish prepared without oil or no cooked food at all.## The Rule and Its AuthorityThe speaker grounds the Holy Thursday restriction in a ruling attributed to the Laodicean Council: “It is unseemly by remitting the fast on the Holy Thursday to dishonour the whole of Lent!” The citation presents the fast not merely as a matter of individual endurance but as an observance shaped by ecclesiastical discipline. The account then turns from the community’s schedule to a more extreme example: a monk remarks that the holy father takes nothing but bread and water throughout the year, even at Easter, setting that year-round austerity against the community’s particular Holy Week fast.