…when His Holiness Moses went to Mount Tur (Sinai) and there
engaged in instituting the Law of God, he fasted forty days. For the purpose of
awakening and admonishing the people of Israel, fasting was enjoined upon them.
Likewise His Holiness Christ in the beginning of instituting the Spiritual Law,
the systematizing of the Teachings and the arrangement of counsels, for forty
days abstained from eating and drinking. In the beginning the disciples and
Christians fasted. Later the assemblages of the chief Christians changed
fasting into Lenten observances. Likewise the Koran having descended in the
month Ramazan, fasting during that month became a duty. In like manner His
Holiness the Supreme (the Báb), in the beginning of the Manifestation, through
the excessive effect of descending Verses, passed days in which his nourishment
was reduced to tea only. Likewise, the Blessed Beauty (Baha’u’llah), when busy
with instituting the Divine Teachings and during the days when the Verses (the
Word of God) descended continuously through the great effect of the Verses and
the throbbing of the heart, took no food except the least amount.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Notes of a table talk in Akka in 1907, recorded by Corinne True;
‘Notes Taken at Acca’, booklet published by Baha’i Publishing Society, Chicago
1907)
