The Lenten Season

 

The Lenten Season invites us to prayer, fasting and almsgiving. I would like to focus here on fasting, though it is clearly closely connected with prayer and almsgiving. As you know, there are a number of different forms of fasting. These include fasting from food, drink, TV, using the social media and from certain behaviors like gossiping, judging, complaining, negative criticism and over working. Some forms of fasting can be nicely replaced with other things, including spiritual reading, silence, prayer, time with family, helping others, etc.

 

Regardless of what form of fasting we engage in, the most important fast is the fast from controlling our own lives. We do this by allowing God to control them instead. Rev. George Maloney put it this way: "to fast in a personalized Christian way, one needs to consult the Holy Spirit constantly." In other words, God wants to determine the how, the when and the how long of our fasting. We need to ask God what form of fasting we should engage in. Fasting is not our own decision, but a decision made with God. We open up to God, give him control and tune in to any promptings from God. We hand over control not just of our Lent but of the rest of the year as well. I am not suggesting this is easy to do, but when the Lord is helping us, "all things are possible".

 

There are many ways we can fast other than from food, but when we fast from food and experience the hunger that comes from it, God may speak in a unique way to our hearts. The following are a few of the reasons fasting from food can be important.

• Hunger for food may give us a glimpse of the experience of our brothers and sisters all over the world who every day experience hunger. We may feel led to respond to the needs of the hungry.
• (Isaiah 58:1-9) We soon realize that fasting is a luxury because we have something to fast from. This is not true of most of the world. Fasting from food can deepen our compassion and lead to almsgiving and political action. Rev. Thomas Ryan put it this way:  "Fasting is a way of identifying with all the suffering peoples of the world, especially those dying of hunger. We tend to forget the pain of the world if we are always very comfortable."
• Hunger for food makes us more aware of how much control the desire for food has over us and how we use food beyond our need for nourishment.   Fasting can unmask our attachments.  If we find resistance within us to a particular form of fasting, we realize our lack of freedom, how much power certain things have over us, and what we need to hand over to the Lord.
• Hunger for food can be used to remind us to offer intercessory prayer for another, or it can be itself our prayer of petition. For example, on a given day, rather than offering a prayer of petition for another with words, we might decide not to eat between meals and offer the experience of hunger to God on another's behalf.
• Hunger for food can be used to remind us of our deeper hunger for God and of God's hunger for us. It may remind us that there is something missing in life and that we will only be fully satisfied in the next life (Matthew 9:14- 15). It reminds us that the world is transitory and that the earth is not our permanent home.
• The decision to fast and therefore hunger for food can deepen within us a hunger to give of ourselves more fully to others and to the Lord.
• Hunger for food may remind us that there are more important things in life than our personal comfort.
• Hunger for food can be used as an expression of repentance, as an acknowledgement that my life is not what the Lord wants it to be, that sin exists in my life, and that I need the forgiveness and power of God in my life.
• Fasting provides the opportunity to listen to ourselves in a new way, especially to our fears. It invites us to confront our mortality and neediness.

 

There are many other reasons we might choose to fast. Fasting can be helpful when we need to clarity God's will, when our prayer lacks enthusiasm and is very distracted, when we are self-absorbed and not open to the Lord or another, when we are grieving over the pain in the world, when everything is getting on our nerves and we lack energy to reach out to another.

 

Gandhi said: "No matter from what motive you are fasting, during this precious time, think of your Maker and of your relation to him and his other creation and you will make  discoveries you may not even have  dreamed of."

 

St. Augustine captured an important aspect of fasting from food when he said: "Your privations will be fruitful if you provide for the needs of another. Certainly you have deprived your body, but to whom did you give that which you deprived yourself? Fast then in such a way that when another has eaten in your place you may rejoice in the meal you have not taken. Then your offering will be received by God."

 

Fasting is of course not just valued by Catholics; most religions encourage it in some fashion. The Muslims have Ramadan, the Jews Yorn Kippur and Tisha B'Av, the Mormons have a monthly Sunday fast, and Catholics and Orthodox have Fridays of Lent. If you would like to learn more about fasting, especially as practiced in other religious traditions, I would recommend a book entitled: The sacred art of fasting: preparing to practice, by Paulist Father Thomas Ryan. In addition to Christianity Father Ryan speaks about Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Latter-day Saints.

 

In conclusion, I would invite everyone to pray for one another with words, or fast so that we will be open to the Lord's presence and will in our lives.