March 4

Third wisdom [of fasting]: Fasting is of two kinds, material and spiritual. The material fasting is abstaining from food or drink, that is, from the appetites of the body. But spiritual, ideal fasting is this, that man abstain from selfish passions, from negligence and from satanic animal traits. Therefore material fasting is a token of the spiritual fasting. (‘Abdu’l-Baha, from a talk in Akka, ‘Table Talks by ‘Abdu’l-Baha’; Corinne True, booklet published by Baha’i Publishing Society, Chicago 1907)