Some erroneously associate fasting with special times of the year, especially Lent. However, as life constantly shows, fasting is part and parcel of being human, let alone being spiritual.
In fact, there is what we can call political and social fasting like hunger strikes. Then, the so-called cleansing fasts as in health and ideological fasting. Fasting can also be pathological, especially when anorexia and other serious illnesses are involved. Another type of fasting is aesthetic. Here the vice of gluttony is severely subdued at the expense of another vice, vanity! Finally, there is an imposed kind of fasting which is the unfortunate result of the lack of indispensable minimum of food. How many innocent people die of hunger due to this horrible fasting! As one can see, these types of fasts have nothing to do with those fasts that help us grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ.
Fasting is a joyous experience. In his book For the Life of the World, the late Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann writes: “The Church is in time and its life in this world is fasting, that is, a life of effort, sacrifice, self-denial and dying. The Church’s very mission is to become all things to all men. But how could the Church fulfil this mission, how could it be the salvation of the world, if it were not, first of all and above everything else, the divine gift of Joy, the fragrance of the Holy Spirit, the presence here in time of the feast of the Kingdom?”
Schmemann’s view strongly recalls Jesus’ practical recommendation concerning fasting. “And when you fast, do not look dismal like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt 6:16-18).
Thus, the primary intention of this total gift of ourselves, as fasting certainly is, is that of making us, as Father Schmemann puts it, “light, concentrated, sober, joyful, pure”. If one were to study fasting in detail one would easily detect the healing character of this strong ascetical practice. In fact, fasting leads to penance; in other words to that therapy that helps me become responsibly aware of what I have lost and what I should do to get it back.
Penance helps us in the healing process as we start forgetting about ourselves and become more open to God’s healing, as fruitfully manifested in our loving concern for our brothers and sisters.
The American Jesuit priest and archimandrite of the Eastern Catholic Church, Fr Robert Francis Taft, in his book Beyond East and West, says that penance is “not a turning in on self, not a concentration on self-discipline as some sort of spiritual athletics, but an openness to new life, and through it openness to others, the end to which it is all supposed to lead”. Hence, the end result of fasting is that through it we are being opened to a new life of grace.
Under the wise discretion of a spiritual father or mother, fasting becomes that “gold standard” in which we, individually, can measure our personal spiritual progress in all humility. Obviously, as Alexander Schmemann rightly points out, our fasting is efficacious inasmuch as we are able to carry out a fast to “control our speech”. Unless we reach a high level of silence in our spiritual life, without which we cannot hear the Lord speak to us, our fast is rendered fruitless. Silence teaches me to renounce the spirit of sloth, faint-heartedness, lust for power and idle talk.
Silence helps me embrace the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love. Silence helps me see my own errors and not to judge my brother and sister.
If fasting is so spiritually effective, why can’t we make take this Lent as an opportunity to fast and offer it for peace in our world?
Provided of course that we control our speech!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
Paola