March 2

…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)