O you who have faith! Written for you is fasting. In the tongue of allusion and the clarification of wisdom, He is saying, “O you who have faith, fasting has been written for you. It has been written because you will be the guests of the Real, and tomorrow in paradise He wants to take hungry guests to a banquet. When the generous take someone to a banquet, they like the guests to be hungry so that the feast will be sweeter in their hearts. The Lord of the Worlds created paradise and everything within it for the faithful. None of it is of any use to Him, nor does He have any need for it.” A pir of the Sufis sent out an invitation, but no one came. The pir lifted up his hands and said, “Lord God, if you send your servants into the fire tomorrow, paradise and perfect bliss will be like my table!” The value of a table is for people to sit there and eat. Indeed, the Lord of the Worlds created all the treasuries of blessing for the faithful and the eaters, but He Himself does not eat. This is why He says, “Fasting belongs to Me, and with it I recompense.” One of them said, “In other words, 'Self-sufficiency belongs to Me. I do not eat or drink. I reward those who fast without reckoning, for they sought conformity with Me by not eating. They sought friendship with Me, for the first station in friendship is conformity.'” Know then that when you gain conformity with the angels by saying “Amen” at the end of the Surah of Praise, your past and future sins are forgiven-as has come in the report. Hence by means of your conformity with God in not eating-even though your not eating is by self-exertion and temporary, and God's not eating is a beginningless attribute-you should know what eminence and nobility accrue to your heart and religion! It has been said that by saying “Fasting is Mine,” He ascribed fasting to Himself so that the hands of the plaintiffs would fall short of that. Tomorrow at the resurrection, when those plaintiffs gather around you and take away your acts of worship by calling you to account for your acts of wrongdoing, the Lord of the Worlds will keep your fasting in the treasury of His bounty and say to the plaintiffs, “This belongs to Me-you have no hand in this.
