This handbook brings together passages from the Bahá'í Writings about the Fast, with reflections by Bahá'ís on the practice of fasting, and prayers appropriate to the fasting period. It has been compiled primarily for personal use by Bahá'ís during their Fast, but it is also of interest to anyone who wants to know about the age-old practice of fasting for spiritual reasons - what it is, how to do it and what it means to those who experience it.

"fasting . . . 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."
⏤ Shoghi Effendi

"We have enjoined upon you fasting during a brief period", Bahá'u'lláh writes in His Book of Laws. The Bahá'í Fast is a time of spiritual regeneration, when Bahá'ís all over the world rise before dawn to pray and meditate before beginning their daily fast from sunrise to sunset.