Fasting Anyone?

When I found the article I'm blogging today I thought it might be a little premature.  However, February is short and Ash Wednesday will be here before we know it.

The article caught my eye because I grew up in a tradition that emphasized fasting.  It's not that we as Catholics don't emphasize it, but that we tend to see its purpose differently.  Most Catholics I know will say that fasting is a form of penance--and indeed it is.  However there is another side of fasting--the side I knew as a youth.  I was taught that fasting was a powerful way to make contact with God in prayer.

When I was a young Christian I was told that fasting was the sure way to get prayers answered or to overcome difficult situations.  Given the world we live in today, I'm thinking that fasting is not a bad idea at all.  I especially recommend fasting with an intention--say fasting and praying for a newfound respect for all human life in our world, or fasting for those who are hungry.  Perhaps there is a personal difficulty or troublesome situation.  Don't just pray about it.  Pray and fast about it.

Although the Pope is asking us to rediscover fasting during Lent, we ought also to keep in mind that it's a good practice throughout the year.  Fridays are an especially a good time to fast, but Thursdays--or any other week day--will work too.

Here's the excerpt.  The whole story is rather lengthy.

As Catholics around the world prepare to begin the Lenten season in just over three weeks, Pope Benedict XVI has published his Lenten Message for 2009. This year the Holy Father focuses his message on the meaning and value of fasting, emphasizing that it helps believers to prepare to do the will of God.

The message, which the Pope penned on December 11, 2008, has as its title, a verse from the Gospel of St. Matthew: "He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry."

The Holy Father traces the practice of fasting all the way back to God’s command to Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Walking through salvation history, the Pope points to his Lenten message’s theme: "The true fast is thus directed to eating the 'true food', which is to do the Father's will."

Pope Benedict also acknowledges that fasting has become fashionable for people concerned with their bodily health, but he explains that for believers the primary benefit of fasting is as "a 'therapy' to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God." "Denying material food, which nourishes our body," the Pope adds, "nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word."

The final dimension of fasting the Holy Father mentions is that turns one outwards and thereby keeps alive a "welcoming and attentive attitude towards our brothers and sisters." In order to encourage this he writes: "I encourage the parishes and every other community to intensify in Lent the custom of private and communal fasts, joined to the reading of the Word of God, prayer and almsgiving."

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[Carol]

Whoa--we get an Apostolic blessing into it, just reading the thing! I love it. He says (and this is what struck me most), "From what I have said thus far, it seems abundantly clear that fasting represents an important ascetic practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person. Quite opportunely, an ancient hymn of the Lenten liturgy exhorts: 'Utamur ergo parcius, / verbis cibis et potibus, / somno, iocis et arctius / perstemus in custodia' - Let us use sparingly words, food and drink, sleep and amusements. May we be more alert in the custody of our senses."

Amen. As I read through your post and his, I thought of how athletes train for their competition, and of how soldiers train for theirs.. They say "no" to themselves on many things, and "yes" to the things that will cost them in the short run, but pay off in the long one. We face an unholy competition in this world. If the athlete or soldier is all fat and snoozy, he or she can forget about impressive times. Same for us, spiritually. We fast not only from some meals, but from the other things that keep us fat and snoozy and isolated and protected. My body didn't start to age until JP II died, but whenever we see that--and we each will-- we know that we are not just physical individuals, and that our time in life has a deadline. It's one thing to leave this world, but it's another whole kettle of fish to enter eternity.

Lent is for Prodigal-ing indeed--and as I say, we are heading into basic training again; but if nothing else, our self-imposed hunger and/or thirst leaves us more aware of others' hunger and thirst-- right away! To refuse that awareness is to shun the Beatitudes. There is Someone Who will one day ask, "Why?" as well as "Why didn't you?" We fast as global Church as well as individually, and what a thrill to be able to say that.