Lenten fasting helps us turn toward God

Intermountain Catholic

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The season of Lent calls Christians to fast. Among the many reasons to limit our eating and drinking are to obey God, to practice self-discipline, to express our hunger for God, to show solidarity with the poor and to make satisfaction for sins, all in hopes of obtaining a heavenly reward.

Fasting is one of the three pillars of Lent; the other two are prayer and almsgiving. There are many ways to pray, and many ways to express charity, but Jesus himself gave us directions on how to fast.

When fasting, Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew, we are not to look dismal. Rather, “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,” Jesus says.

Expounding on the theology of fasting, St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica states that excess fasting must be avoided: a person must eat enough food to sustain life and maintain sufficient strength to do “the works to which he would otherwise be obliged.” In reply to those who would fast to excess, Aquinas quotes St. Jerome: “He who immoderately afflicts his body either by eating too little food, or by taking too little sleep, offers a sacrifice of theft.”

St. Francis de Sales offers a similar caution on the need for moderation in fasting. Although he suggests undertaking fasting on “some days beyond what are ordered by the Church” because of the spiritual benefits of fasting, he warns that “A want of moderation in the use of fasting, discipline and austerity has made many a one useless in works of charity during the best years of his life.”

Writing in the fourth century, St. Basil the Great echoed Christ’s teaching that people who are fasting should maintain “a joyful attitude, as befits holy people. No one who desponds is crowned, no one who sulks sets up a trophy of victory. Do not be sullen while you are being healed. It would be absurd not to rejoice over the health of your soul, but rather to be distressed over a change of diet and give the impression of setting more store by the pleasure of your stomach than by the care of your soul. For satiety brings delight to the stomach, whereas fasting brings profit to the soul. Be of good cheer, for the physician has given you a medicine that destroys sin.”

Fasting is an ancient gift through which amends to God may be made, St. Basil adds. “Fasting brings one close to God, and … indulgence drives away salvation. Once you descend to indulgence, you are on the road to perdition.”

In keeping with Church teaching, Basil states that fasting is not only refraining from food but also “consists in estrangement from vices” such as insulting others and anger.

“Anger is inebriation of the soul, making it deranged, just as wine does,” he writes.

Following Vatican II, the previous strictures on fasting were lessened. Nevertheless, “the necessity of an asceticism which chastises the body and brings it into subjection is affirmed with special insistence by the example of Christ himself,” states the apostolic constitution Paenitemini (On Fast and Abstinence) by Pope Paul VI.

An intimate relationship exists between the external act of penitence and inner conversion; this “is affirmed and widely developed in the liturgical texts and authors of every era,” Paul VI writes.

Continuing the theme of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II said in his general audience on March 21, 1979 that the practice of fasting is “not only a ‘vestige’ of a religious practice of past centuries, but that it is also indispensable for the man of today, for Christians of our time. … Fasting in the time of Lent is the expression of our solidarity with Christ. Such was the meaning of Lent throughout the centuries and such it remains today.”

Modern technology allows people to satiate themselves with sensations, so “modern man must fast, that is, abstain not only from food or drink, but from many other means of consumption, stimulation, satisfaction of the senses,” he added.

“Renunciation of sensations, stimuli, pleasures and even food or drink is not an end in itself,” Pope John Paul II said, but rather creates conditions for people to open themselves to the spiritual and to God.

Pope Francis has added to papal teaching on fasting. In a 2018 homily, he suggested that people should ask whether their fasting helps others; if it doesn’t, it’s inconsistent with true Christianity, he said. In his 2022 Lenten message, he prayed, “May the corporal fasting to which Lent calls us fortify our spirit for the battle against sin.”