Lent is rapidly approaching, and that means it’s time to think about fasting. These days Catholics are only obliged to fast two days a year: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, both of which fall in the Lenten season.
This practice of fasting twice a year is the bare minimum expected of us as Catholic Christians, and so we should be careful to view it as a spiritual floor rather than a spiritual ceiling. If we care about actually growing in the spiritual life, then we need to fast more frequently.
This point was made by the US Catholic bishops back in 1966 in their Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence. The document was a reflection building on St Paul VI’s apostolic constitution Poenitemini, and to my knowledge the bishops’ directives remain in effect to this day:
For all other weekdays of Lent, we strongly recommend participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting. In the light of grave human needs which weigh on the Christian conscience in all seasons, we urge, particularly during Lent, generosity to local, national, and world programs of sharing of all things needed to translate our duty to penance into a means of implementing the right of the poor to their part in our abundance. We also recommend spiritual studies, beginning with the Scriptures as well as the traditional Lenten Devotions (sermons, Stations of the Cross, and the rosary), and all the self-denial summed up in the Christian concept of “mortification.” (#14)
We have good reason, then, to make fasting an integral part of our Lenten discipline. Fasting is not the same as abstinence, where we refrain from consuming a particular food or drink such as meat on Fridays, or chocolate during Lent. Rather, fasting is quite simply about eating less food and allowing ourselves to feel hungry.
Traditionally this means limiting oneself to one full meal per day, usually eaten at lunchtime. These days, however, the Church allows two additional “collations”, or snacks, for those who need it. Children, the sick, the elderly and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding are all exempt from the Church’s requirements on fasting.
It is worth putting to bed a common misconception which views fasting as arising from a certain contempt towards the body. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth: as Christians, we fast not because our bodies are bad, but because they are good.
Our bodies are good, but a direct consequence of the Fall is that our physical appetites for things like food, sex and sleep are often no longer subject to reason. Left unchecked, these disordered appetites begin to stifle the life in our soul, like weeds taking over a garden. Fasting is a way of reintegrating body and soul by pruning that garden and restoring it to its original beauty.
Of course, this pruning can be painful. Indeed, it is a testament to our abundance of modern comforts that many of us find the idea of going to bed hungry rather frightening. And whereas with abstinence you can usually find a decent workaround (such as eating salmon on Friday instead of beef), with fasting there are no workarounds. Fasting leaves us feeling hungry, and we don’t like that.
And yet, isn’t this the whole point of fasting? Fasting is such a powerful spiritual weapon because it makes real demands of us. To borrow a line from JFK, we choose to fast not because it is easy, but because it is hard. Fasting is for Christians who are serious about overcoming sin, serious about building up the Body of Christ and serious about saving the world.
When the New Testament speaks of fasting, it depicts it as opening up spiritual heights that aren not accessible by prayer alone. After the disciples failed to cast out a demon, Jesus explains, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting” (Mark 9:29). In the Acts of the Apostles, the Christian community makes a point of fasting before appointing elders and sending out missionaries (see Acts 13:2–3; 14:23). From a biblical perspective, fasting equips us for spiritual warfare by bringing us to a point of physical weakness, which becomes our place of victory: “for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).
In one of his Lenten sermons, St Augustine offered a challenge to his North African congregation: “Do you want your prayers to fly to God? Then give them two wings, fasting and almsgiving.” It’s a timely reminder that if all we do as Christians is go to Mass and say our prayers, then something is missing. That something is sacrifice, without which our prayer becomes stunted and our worship becomes hollow.
Sacrifice is at the beating, bleeding heart of our faith. The Gospel message doesn’t make sense without it. And while fasting is not the only or even the most important form of sacrifice, it is not optional either. For those of us who are fit and healthy, it is a non-negotiable part of the Christian life. So if we’re serious about making spiritual progress between now and Easter, we should plan what our fasting will look like this Lent.
