Washington D.C., Mar 3, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- 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 meatless 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.
[…]
“Who am I to judge?”
Hey, at least Navarro isn’t identifying as a sister, eh?
The bishop has dutifully passed his judgement in regards Mr Navarro’s actions. As the bishops states Navarro is “being disengenuous and dishonest.” Also, let Navarro wear a policman’s or fireman’s outfit and act as one and see what happens.
I suppose this young man thinks that the Church has failed him and so he must set about to correct her? Is that what is going on here?
“We’re following the rules, we’re following the guidelines,” he asserts. Really? And he adds, “it’s a free country, so to speak.” The appeal to “a free country” is both disingenuous and irrelevant. The country probably doesn’t give a tinker’s dam.
Holy Mother Church, however, does care, even if She has strange ways of showing it at times.
And that “so to speak” speaks volumes. It is Navarro speaking for (to put it bluntly) the father of lies. “I will not serve,” he says in Milton’s account. That is, I will not serve another, certainly not one who has the status of authority given, delegated to him–and not simply assumed.
It is just one more instance of the arrogance of an overweening autonomy at work. In time, perhaps he will learn better.
Note: The role of the so-called social media in phenomena like this is only too predictable. Imagine: without it, Mr. Martin would likely never have even thought to exercise his pretentions.
How many religious congregations and monastic communities can be regarded as living authentic religious life? More the frat house and sorority life at best, more likely assisted living facility. All with the legacy of an erroneous “spirit of the council.”
Having absolutely no knowledge of Brother Martin or the Oblates of Saint Augustine it must be said that there are not a few aware and faithful Roman Catholics who have serious reservations regarding who exactly in the Church is accurately regarded as disingenuous and dishonest — the shepherds or the sheep?
Sheep deliberately deprived of accurate catechesis and scattered, what could that verdict be?
Regardless of what wrong are going on in the Church, doing what this man is doing is not the right way. In effect, he is trying to start another branch of the Catholic Church within the Church. One that suits his views. He’s no better than all the other breakaways who got disillusioned with the Catholic Church so decided they could do better. They never do, of course. There are approximately 40,000 different Christian denominations, all started by somone who thought they could do better. It will fail, like they all do.
James: There are lots of faithful religious communities. You’re not looking in the right places…start here:
http://www.religiouslife.com
“Bishop Johnston intends any further communication to be private.”
That is as it should be, and so methinks that we can depend on Navarro to keep this whole matter as public as possible, because he knows he has no real legs to stand on. This being so – he knows he must depend on people who don’t really know what’s going on to keep this going.
FYI – I oppose the suppression – a strong term but one which I am using – of the Traditional Latin Mass, which I find profoundly moving both spiritually and musically, not being a fan of ‘glad tambourines’.
Yea let’s get the Trads!
From the Wikipedia article titled “Clerical collar”:
Catholicism
In the Catholic Church, the clerical collar is worn by all ranks of clergy, thus: bishops, priests, and deacons, and often by seminarians as well as with their cassock during liturgical celebrations.
Bishops, superiors, and popes only have authority over you if you give it to them. And given their constant abuse of authority and corruption they have no authority. This isn’t the Papal States in the Middle Ages. “Sorry Bishop. I don’t really care what you think. Have a nice day.” Granted, that was Luther’s attitude, but Frankie loves Luther. You reap what you sow.
You are mistaking the ability to use force with authority. They have authority from Christ whether they use it well or not, or can bring force to bear or not.
A few things…it seems to me that a young man starting a religious community out of the blue seems to be the height of arrogance. It’s as though he’s saying that there are no recognized communities or Orders in the entire Church that meets his standard of holiness. He is barely old enough to be ordained let alone be the founder and superior of a religious community.
Secondly, initiatives like these seem to be just a high level of medieval cosplay. What exactly makes this guy a traditional Augustinian? Does he have an Augustinian formation or did he just read some books? One can’t just wake up one day and say “Hey, I’m an Augustinian now.”
Lastly, it seems like he just showed up in the diocese of the Bishop (wearing a cassock and presenting himself as a religious when he is not) and then demanded some sort of official recognition. The Bishop is right to be wary and to not grant his approval. The Bishop has no idea who this guy is, and yet this guy presumes ecclesiastical approval. Moreover, he makes public his private communication with the Bishop and casts himself as a martyr. Lots of red flags. The Bishop is right.
Sounds like Francis, the Saint not the pope.
Padre: At every stage of St. Francis’ life, he submitted himself and his Order to the judgement of the Church.
“What exactly makes this guy a traditional Augustinian? Does he have an Augustinian formation or did he just read some books?”
Andrew, why don’t you contact him through the website of the Oblates and ask him? Maybe he was originally formed in another Augustinian community. And if he simply doesn’t join an existing community maybe that is because there is not an existing community in the Church which adheres both to Augustinian spirituality and traditional liturgy. As to starting a community out of the blue, usually a religious order begins informally with men (or women) coming together to live a communal life of prayer and then if it seems to thrive, formal approbation from Church authorities is requested and formal constitutions can be approved. That seems to be all [Br.] Martin is asking for at this stage. That said, he definitely needs to get off social media, since it is hard to imagine a religious brother – traditional or otherwise – being on Twitter. One aspect of this story that seems to be overlooked, is Pope Francis’s handcuffing of bishops and taking away their authority to approve new religious institutes on the diocesan level without approval from Rome. Yet another of the hypocrisies of the current pontificate: always talking about synodality and the authority of bishops, but in reality limiting their legitimate prerogatives. It is and should be up to Bishop Johnston whether he wants to give formal approval to the Oblates of St. Augustine; the outrageous thing is that Francis won’t let the bishop do it, even if he wants to.
Peter: I don’t need to ask him anything as his bishop has rendered his decision.
As for starting a community, he can do that informally (as you say) without the unauthorized use of habits, religious titles etc. He can also get a job and suspend the fundraising which seems to be done under the pretence that he has a properly established religious community (which he does not). From there he can start quietly living his life of prayer and then humbly approach the Bishop. What one does NOT do is show up in a diocese. Wear a habit, call yourself Brother (when you are not), say your an Oblate of St. Augustine and then start fund raising and holding vocation weekends and demand recognition from the Bishop before approval. He’s not asking, but demanding and now that the Bishop has answered in the negative, this guy is throwing a public tantrum.
Again, this is just medieval/church cosplay and the religious fantasies of some guy. Sadly, the bishop’s response will probably just fuel his “remnant of the true Church/persecution” delusions. I’m really sick of Trads that act like this.
He has already started founding the community informally, it’s called a de facto private association of the faithful. It doesn’t require the Bishops permission. It’s just a canonical term for a group of Catholics who come together to live under a common rule.
He didn’t just show up out of nowhere and decide to be a monk. He spent a number of years in other communities but wants to found a new group around the Old Mass and Breviary.
He also does not wear a cassock and collar currently, he stopped doing so at the request of the Bishop months ago. The reporter who wrote this story is misrepresenting him by using an outdated screenshot. They currently wear something that resembles a habit but technically is not a habit. What do you want him to wear? Jeans and a t-shirt?
There is nothing out of the ordinary about what he is doing. It’s just that the Bishop is opposed to working with him to recognize founding a community.
If the National Catholic Reporter — widely subscribed to across the spectrum of the clerical world — can mask itself as Catholic, why should this community not describe itself as it pleases.
Should we need ask ourselves who exactly is responsible for the erosion of accurate Roman Catholic nomenclature?
The ecclesiastical machine has done this to themselves and intentionally. In that context the good bishop stands on quicksand. The episcopate and the current pontificate have undermined themselves. They should not attempt to exercise an authority they have deliberately debased — it only magnifies their impotence.
James: Thanks for that hilarious example of circular reasoning and non sequiturs. Great satire of Trad arguments. Bravo! Lol.
If he is a priest, he is dead WRONG. It wouldn’t be the first time I see an american priest disobeying a bishop, going against God and priestly hierarchy; remember Fr Corapi?
This guy is more interested in his twitter audience, is more interested about promoting himself!!! Simple as!!!
Regardless of what wrong are going on in the Church, doing what this man is doing is not the right way. In effect, he is trying to start another branch of the Catholic Church within the Church. One that suits his views. He’s no better than all the other breakaways who got disillusioned with the Catholic Church so decided they could do better. They never do, of course. There are approximately 40,000 different Christian denominations, all started by somone who thought they could do better. It will fail, like they all do.
Another sad example of someone who thinks he is above the Catholic Church law. I guess you can call yourself anything you want but that doesn’t make it true. If he wants to be a brother so much why doesn’t he go through the correct process? He thinks he knows more than the collective wisdom of the Holy Catholic Church. He does not. He is disobedience personified. Shame on those 11,000 people following him. He is leading them astray and they are allowing themselves to be led astray. He appears to be acting outside of the Church. What is seems to be is that he is setting up his own personal Catholic Church. So, in effect, just a layperson who thinks he is smarter than the collective Catholic Church. He is just exercising a willful stance, going against direction from a Bishop.
This poor soul is looking for purpose in his life. I wonder if this began with the lockdown and the rush to virtual Mass, and this is his solution? Currently it seems almost comical, if not for the underlying deception and potential scandal. I hope the poor soul does not sink deeper into his self deception. If anyone reading this is within convenient access, please reach out to him over breakfast or coffee and find out what’s bugging him and offer him sound council and prayer.