Nineteen Day Fast - Spiritual Nature

Spiritual Nature

Along with obligatory prayer, it is one of the greatest obligations of a Bahá'í and is intended to bring the person closer to God. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, explains that "It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires."

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