Fasting

To Educate Our Desire

In his chapter on “The Tools for Good Works” St. Benedict gives us the following:

“Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ, discipline your body, do not pamper yourself, but love fasting” (RB 4:10-13).

The reason why fasting is something that can be good for us, and therefore lovable, becomes clearer in his chapter on “The Observance of Lent”:

During these days, therefore, we will add to the usual measure of our service something by way of private prayer and abstinence from food or drink, so that each of us will have something above the assigned measure to offer God of his own will with the joy of the Holy Spirit. In other words, let each one deny himself some food, drink, sleep, needless talking and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing. (RB 40:5-7)

Fasting at any time (not just during Lent) helps educate my desire for the parousia (advent) of Christ, that is his presence and arrival in my life- to experience what nobody but the Christian can know- the experience now of the resurrection. Christ himself said his disciples will fast when the bridegroom (Christ) is absent. Therefore, when I fast I am praying with my body, Come, Lord Jesus! If I fast with this longing for the Bridegroom then indeed it will be permeated with joy. Like the lover in the Song of Songs I go out to seek Him who seeks me. Joy is the fruit of this belonging.

• However you fast, freely take it up

and remember why. If it feels like an imposition and just a duty to get through, stop and ask yourself why you are fasting. Ask for the Holy Spirit to enter into your fasting. To remind you for Whom you long in your fast. Pray,

“Come Holy Spirit.”

• The USCCB articulates the basic norms for fast days: “When fasting, a person is permitted to eat one full meal, as well as two smaller meals that together are not equal to a full meal.”

One, of course, is free to do more. St.

Benedict recommends seeking counsel from a superior first, though, to curb the possibility of “presumption and vainglory” (RB 49:9).

• Fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Wednesday is a traditional day of fast because it is the day Judas betrayed our

Lord. It is a day on which Christ’s full divinity and humanity was veiled from us and we long to see Him as He truly is. The Church has us particularly fast on Friday, the day of our Lord’s death.

It is a day of great longing to see Him who is so hidden from our sight in the incomprehensibility of the Passion, when man killed God whom he did not know.

Suggestions continued

• Move breakfast to lunch. Breakfast is whenever you break-fast. Consider making lunch your first meal of the day.

• Do not eat outside of communal times.

In his chapter concerning “Brothers on a Short Journey” (RB 51) St. Benedict essentially tells the brothers: don’t eat out (unless it is a special circumstance determined by the Abbot) on pain of excommunication. Why? Because where and with whom we eat expresses the place and people we belong to.

If we are not longing for the Bridegroom with all of our being – body, soul, and spirit – will we recognize Him at his advent, when He arrives? Similarly, it has been said that if you do not know how to fast you will not know how to feast.