Pasadena Baha’is prepare for the Fast

Monday, March 2, the Bahá’ís of Pasadena, California will join five million Bahá’ís worldwide in their annual period of fasting. For nineteen days each year, March second through March twentieth, Bahá’ís abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset. Before dawn, families awaken to pray together and have their morning meal. The obligation of fasting begins at age fifteen and continues until the age of seventy. 

 Like Lent in Christianity and Ramadan in Islam, the Bahá’í Fast is essentially a period of meditation and prayer when the individual reflects on his or her own spiritual life. It symbolizes the importance of detachment and self-restraint and is used as spiritual preparation for the Bahá’í new year which begins March twenty-first:  http://info.bahai.org/article-1-4-7-2.html

The Bahá’í Faith, the second most widely spread religion in the world after Christianity, has more than five million members world wide of whom 142,000 reside in the United States:  www.bahai.org

Sunrise/Sunset times for March