Washington D.C., Feb 19, 2021 / 03:02 pm ().- God commanded it, Jesus practiced it, Church Fathers have preached the importance of it – fasting is a powerful and fundamental part of the Christian life.
But for many Catholics today, it’s more of an afterthought: something we grudgingly do on Good Friday, perhaps on Ash Wednesday if we remember it. Would we fast more, especially during Lent, if we understood how helpful it is for our lives?
The answer to this, say both saints of the past and experts today, is a resounding “yes.”
“Let us take for our standard and for our example those that have run the race, and have won,” said Deacon Sabatino Carnazzo, founding executive director of the Institute of Catholic Culture and a deacon at Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Mclean, Va., of the saints.
“And…those that have run the race and won have been men and women of prayer and fasting.”
So what, in essence, is fasting?
It’s “the deprivation of the good, in order to make a decision for a greater good,” explained Deacon Carnazzo. It is most commonly associated with abstention from food, although it can also take the form of giving up other goods like comforts and entertainment.
The current fasting obligation for Latin Catholics in the United States is this: all over the age of 14 must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and all Fridays in Lent. On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, adults age 18 to 59 must fast – eating no more than one full meal and two smaller meals that together do not add up in quantity to the full meal.
Catholics, “if possible,” can continue the Good Friday fast through Holy Saturday until the Easter Vigil, the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference adds.
Other Fridays throughout the year (aside from Friday within the Octave of Easter) “are penitential days and times throughout the entire Church,” according to Canon Law 1250. Catholics once abstained from meat on all Fridays, but the U.S. bishops received permission from the Holy See for Catholics to substitute another sacrifice or perform an act of charity instead.
Eastern Rite Catholics, meanwhile, follow the fasting laws of their own particular church.
In their 1966 “Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence,” the National Conference of Catholic Bishops exhorted the faithful, on other days of Lent where fasting is not required, to “participation in daily Mass and a self-imposed observance of fasting.”
Aside from the stipulations, though, what’s the point of fasting?
“The whole purpose of fasting is to put the created order and our spiritual life in a proper balance,” Deacon Carnazzo said.
As “bodily creatures in a post-fallen state,” it’s easy to let our “lower passions” for physical goods supersede our higher intellect, he explained. We take good things for granted and reach for them whenever we feel like it, “without thinking, without reference to the One Who gives us the food, and without reference to the question of whether it’s good for us or not,” he added.
Thus, fasting helps “make more room for God in our life,” Monsignor Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. said.
“And the Lord said at the well, with the (Samaritan) woman, He said that ‘everyone that drinks from this well is going to be thirsty again. Why don’t you let me go to work in your life and I’ll give you a fountain welling up to Eternal Life.’”
While fasting can take many forms, is abstaining from food especially important?
“The reason why 2000 years of Christianity has said food (for fasting), because food’s like air. It’s like water, it’s the most fundamental,” Deacon Carnazzo said. “And that’s where the Church says ‘stop right here, this fundamental level, and gain control there.’ It’s like the first step in the spiritual life.”
What the Bible says about it
Yet why is fasting so important in the life of the Church? And what are the roots of the practice in Scripture?
The very first fast was ordered by God to Adam in the Garden of Eden, Deacon Carnazzo noted, when God instructed Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17).
This divine prohibition was not because the tree was bad, the deacon clarified. It was “made good” like all creation, but its fruit was meant to be eaten “in the right time and the right way.” In the same way, we abstain from created goods so we may enjoy them “in the right time and the right way.”
The fast is the weapon of protection against demons – St. Basil the Great.
Fasting is also good because it is submission to God, he said. By fasting from the fruit of the tree, Adam and Eve would have become partakers in the Divine Nature through their obedience to God. Instead, they tried to take this knowledge of good and evil for themselves and ate the fruit, disobeying God and bringing Original Sin, death, and illness upon mankind.
At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus abstained from food and water for 40 days and nights in the desert and thus “reversed what happened in the Garden of Eden,” Deacon Carnazzo explained. Like Adam and Eve, Christ was tempted by the devil but instead remained obedient to God the Father, reversing the disobedience of Adam and Eve and restoring our humanity.
Following the example of Jesus, Catholics are called to fast, said Fr. Lew. And the Church Fathers preached the importance of fasting.
Why fasting is so powerful
“The fast is the weapon of protection against demons,” taught St. Basil the Great. “Our Guardian Angels more really stay with those who have cleansed our souls through fasting.”
Why is fasting so powerful? “By setting aside this (created) realm where the devil works, we put ourselves into communion with another realm where the devil does not work, he cannot touch us,” Deacon Carnazzo explained.
It better disposes us for prayer, noted Monsignor Pope. Because we feel greater hunger or thirst when we fast from food and water, “it reminds us of our frailty and helps us be more humble,” he said. “Without humility, prayer and then our experience of God really can’t be unlocked.”
Thus, the practice is “clearly linked by St. Thomas Aquinas, writing within the Tradition, to chastity, to purity, and to clarity of mind,” noted Fr. Lew.
“You can kind of postulate from that that our modern-day struggles with the virtue of chastity, and perhaps a lack of clarity in theological knowledge, might be linked to an abandonment of fasting as well.”
A brief history of fasting
The current fasting obligations were set in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, but in previous centuries, the common fasts among Catholics were stricter and more regularly observed.
Catholics abstained from meat on all Fridays of the year, Easter Friday excluded. During Lent, they had to fast – one main meal and two smaller meatless meals – on all days excluding Sunday, the day of the Resurrection. They abstained from meat on Fridays and Saturdays in Lent – the days of Christ’s death and lying in the tomb – but were allowed meat during the main meal on the other Lenten weekdays.
The obligations extended to other days of the liturgical year. Catholics fasted and abstained on the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost Sunday, and on Ember Days – the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the Feast of St. Lucy on Dec. 13, after Ash Wednesday, after Pentecost Sunday, and after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September – corresponding with the four seasons.
In centuries past, the Lenten abstention was more austere. Catholics gave up not only meat but also animal products like milk and butter, as well as oil and even fish at times.
Why are today’s obligations in the Latin Rite so minimal? The Church is setting clear boundaries outside of which one cannot be considered to be practicing the Christian life, Deacon Carnazzo explained. That is why intentionally violating the Lenten obligations is a mortal sin.
But should Catholics perform more than the minimum penance that is demanded? Yes, said Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., who is currently studying for a Pontifical License in Sacred Theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C.
The minimum may be “what is due to God out of justice,” he explained, but we are “called not only to be just to God,” but also “to love God and to love our neighbor.” Charity, he added, “would call us to do more than just the minimum that is applied to us by the Code of Canon Law today, I think.”
In Jeremiah 31: 31-33, God promises to write His law upon our hearts, Deacon Carnazzo noted. We must go beyond following a set of rules and love God with our hearts, and this involves doing more than what we are obliged to do, he added.
Be wary of your motivation
However, Fr. Lew noted, fasting “must be stirred up by charity.” A Catholic should not fast out of dieting or pride, but out of love of God.
“It’s always dangerous in the spiritual life to compare yourself to other people,” he said, citing the Gospel of John where Jesus instructed St. Peter not to be concerned about the mission of St. John the Apostle but rather to “follow Me.” (John 21: 20-23).
In like manner, we should be focused on God during Lent and not on the sacrifices of others, he said.
Lent (is referred to) as a joyful season…It’s the joy of loving Him more.
“We will often fail, I think. And that’s not a bad thing. Because if we do fail, this is the opportunity to realize our utter dependence on God and His grace, to seek His mercy and forgiveness, and to seek His strength so that we can grow in virtue and do better,” he added.
And by realizing our weakness and dependence on God, we can “discover anew the depths of God’s mercy for us” and can be more merciful to others, he added.
Giving up good things may seem onerous and burdensome, but can – and should – a Catholic fast with joy?
“It’s referred to in the preface of Lent as a joyful season,” Fr. Lew said. “And it’s the joy of deepening our relationship with Christ, and therefore coming closer to Him. It’s the joy of loving Him more, and the more we love God the closer we draw to Him.”
“Lent is all about the Cross, and eventually the resurrection,” said Deacon Carnazzo. If we “make an authentic, real sacrifice for Christ” during Lent, “we can come to that day of the crucifixion and say ‘Yes Lord, I willingly with you accept the cross. And when we do that, then we will behold the third day of resurrection.’”
This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 20, 2016.
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This calls into question just how serious the US Bishops take both the sacredness of the Eucharist, and the sin of using political position and government authority to endorse, authorize, and enforce the slaughter of babies alive in the womb. Simply no other way to view this.
Meant to say – “how little seriousness the Bishops give to the matter of both.”
Upvote.
“What was noticeably absent from the 26-page draft was any sort of criteria for when to deny a Catholic from receiving the Eucharist.”
IOW – Yada yada yada, probably an urgent call for ‘dialogue’, etc.
Reminder – life begins at conception, and – If it’s growing it’s alive.
Upvote.
For Chairman Joe, Pelosi and others, it matters little what the bishops approve. They won’t take it to heart, because they’ve already written their own catechism, which apparently allows them to do whatever they want AND not be admonished by the USCCB. That’s okay, though, the Supreme admonishment is coming. They won’t be prepared to answer for their actions against God’s laws. But the bishops are leaving faithful Catholics hanging in the lurch. The scandal caused by public figures led to at least half of Catholics voting for Biden in 2020. The oxymoronic “pro-choice Catholics” will take this document as an approval for the pro-choice movement, because it doesn’t single out Catholics who publicly promote and fund abortions. The bishops are letting the faithful down big time.
upvote! what would Mother Angelica say if she were here? How I wish she was….
Division prevails in the United States and within the Catholic Church in our Nation. That the bishops decided not to abide by canon 915 and Apostolic Tradition reveals that. Their decision was political, not religious nor faithful. We must recognize where we’re at. That faith in Christ doesn’t succumb to deadly compromise that reinforces the status quo of a death sentence for the prenatal infant. If we can abolish the death sentence for murderers by what logic do we recognize even promote death for the innocent? A faithful Practice of Catholicism can be in just disagreement with unofficial magisterial policy and remain One Faith in Christ. And absolutely free of schism.
The excerpts are good, but twenty-six pages of padding is too long. So, is it possible to pop the bubble-wrap such that the laity might actually read the paper?
The Ten Commandments fit on two pages! Or, the Fathers of the USCCB might take a leaf from the Founding Fathers’ straightforward Declaration of Independence, at just 1,320 words. Or, maybe the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s (CDC) 973-word response to the dubium on the German blessing of same sex marriages (https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2021/03/15/210315b.html).
Not entirely irrelevant, the CDC response, since the Administrative State this side of the Atlantic—with the useful Jo Biden as its pseudo-Catholic hood ornament—is intent not only on codifying and federally funding abortion, but also normalizing gay marriage, and the mass education of gender theory etc. (clever, that: another form of “mass” education!).
And, inform the reader that notorious politicians from the cult of Baal already excommunicate themselves, although the Church might choose to mercifully (?) refrain from pronouncing the sentence.
In fewer words, uncluttered, remove the scandal and the comfort zone for sacrilegious reception of the Eucharist.
Christine Rousselle makes her point insofar as applicability, “What was notably absent from the 26-page draft was any sort of criteria for when to deny a Catholic from receiving the Eucharist”. That was my impression, the absence of a practical response, for example a directive [at least a recommended format] to priests by the bishops when the conditions are present for withholding communion. Otherwise the draft, while an orthodox instruction, speaks to nothing other than what is already known. Apostolos Suos, the 1998 apostolic letter of St. John Paul II is the catch 22, that said national conferences cannot teach authoritatively on the basis of a consensus; there has to be unanimity or approval from the Holy See. Although CDF prefect Cardinal Ladaria spoke of Apostolos’ preconditions, unanimity on content [sanction seemed illicit by Ladaria even with unanimity] I’m not convinced an effort can’t be made . What is to prevent a majority consensus that already exists from issuing a format for clergy to follow for possible sanction, and at the least withholding the Eucharist from the obstinate? And to present it to the pontiff? Apostolos Suos says there has to be unanimity. Or approval from the Holy See. A petition therefore can be made to the Holy See without unanimity making it known that responsibility for Eucharistic cohesion is not dependent on unanimity, rather on the proclivity of the Pontiff.
And to make it abundantly clear, that Eucharistic cohesion is not simply a matter of consensus, nor a papal opinion. It is absolutely a matter of divine law. Pope Francis with his focus on the inviolability of conscience rather than obedience to ‘rules’ prefers the issue be left to the individual’s conscience preferring canon 916 in which the person determines not to approach the Eucharist rather than the priest withholding [see Fr Raymond de Souza NCReg].
Take a read from America’s leading liturgist for his review of the document…
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/draft-bishops-eucharist-document-reflects-400-year-old-theology
I cannot help but notice in most replys to this article the omission of that ominous word so frequently tossed about in the press, “scandal”
What happened to addressing one of the root causes of this entire kerfluffle? Biden, Pelosi and their public ilk have seriously scandalized themselves and by it’s inaction the church leadership has done the same to itself.
Those of us in the pews are, well, just people not theologians or philosophers. When we see the rules dictated to us don’t apply to those at the top we lose faith in the system and eventually no longer feel the rules binding to ourselves.
We are seeing this apply more and more everyday in our secular lives. This CEO cheats the shareholders, that politicians embezzles public funds. The social price; Today I run a stop sign without remorse, tomorrow I steal from my employer by next year I’ll be cheating on my taxes and my wife.
This is going to be one more nail in the catholic coffin. More self inflicted wounds we could have avoided.