On fasting

Lent is almost over, even though it seems Ash Wednesday was only a couple weeks ago. The fact that it sped by so quickly means I probably wasn’t paying attention closely enough. My sacrifices aren’t painful enough to notice.

It seems this was the Lent to focus on intentions and not deeds, not to give something up, but to try to be nice. In homilies, at our small group study, and on the internet I keep reading or hearing the prayer that goes “Fast from anger … Feast on patience; Fast from complaining… Feast on appreciation; Fast from negatives … Feast on positives; Fast from pessimism … Feast on optimism; Fast from worry… Feast on Providential Care; Fast from judging others … Feast on the Christ in them; Fast from emphasis on differences … Feast on unity of all life;” etc.

It’s a good message, but it all made me feel a little behind the times for giving up sweets and alcohol. I have a curmudgeonly side that wants to reply, “But you’re supposed to do that all the time! Lent is the time for something more!”

Yesterday I received an email from one of the ministries at church asking for dessert donations for a shrimp spaghetti fundraiser – on Good Friday. It got me a little spun up. I tried to compose an email reply about why we wouldn’t be participating, but couldn’t find the right tone, so I finally gave up and am turning to my blog to try to justify fasting from a thing.

I know petulance is not the way to sway hearts. Nor is it my place to try to convince people that fasting is good for them. But I do want to convince my kids that fasting is a valuable spiritual discipline, one that Christ mentions more than once. The challenge is to teach them that fasting is not about rules and discipline to merit redemption. It should be something you want to do, a sacrifice for love.

Now as I try to write this up, I feel more conflicted. The purpose of fasting can be obscured by dangers of scrupulosity or of using Lent as an opportunity to lose weight or feel self-righteous. Fasting from anger and unkind words is harder than sacrificing a dessert every once in awhile, not to mention the fact that giving up some food is not meaningful unless it works on our souls, as St. Basil instructs:

"Turning away from all wickedness means keeping our tongue in check, restraining our anger, suppressing evil desires, and avoiding all gossip, lying, and swearing. To abstain from these things---herein lies the true value of fast.”
And here is St. John Crysostom summing this idea up perfectly: "the value of fasting consists not so much in abstinence from food but rather in withdrawal from sinful practices."

So my little defense of fasting may be misdirected. Of course it is more beneficial to the soul to fast from unkindness and anger than from chocolate. Perhaps it is my weakness that I need to fast from a thing to remind myself that I’m supposed to be sacrificing my desires and knee-jerk emotions. My will is so wimpy that I need a material symbol of that spiritual fast to remind me to practice those virtues. But since our faith is full of material signs of immaterial realities, so I know I’m not the only person to suffer that weakness.

I came across a good message on fasting in the CRS literature that came with the little rice bowl collection boxes: The pangs of hunger when we sacrifice a snack are a reminder that we depend on God for our true sustenance. Declining a donut or chocolate candy when offered is a reminder that Christ gave up everything. A fast can be more than a symbol, as a couple of incidents this week made clear.


In addition to the reminder of our dependency, there’s the solidarity with the poor part. John Paul II, whose beatification is right around the corner, wrote this: "according to the Church's ancient tradition, all faithful today are called to abstain from meat and to fast, except for those who are reasonably prevented from doing so for reasons of health or age. Fasting has a great value in the life of a Christian, ... and to it must be united a sincere desire for inner purification, a willingness to obey the divine will and thoughtful solidarity towards our brothers, especially the poorest."

Our church, even though it serves dessert on Good Friday, also runs one of the largest and busiest St. Vincent de Paul centers in the area. A lot of very generous people make donations. I started volunteering just before Lent once a week, and had to mail off donor thank you letters one day. It made me feel quite small to see how magnanimous some of the donors were. But the center still cannot meet all the requests it receives. What is hardest is when someone shows up like the lady who just inherited her three grandchildren because her daughter is going to jail. She lives in public housing but now she has to move because her apartment is too small for the number of people according to the code. Meanwhile she makes $100 a week at her job. She was desperate when she came to the center, and she received some food and vouchers for the distribution center for clothing and furnishings and some assistance with utilities, but the center has a rule that it can only help her out financially once every 3 months. She can pick up a box of food once a week, but although she was thankful, you could still sense her despair as she left. It’s just not enough.


And here I spend the amount she makes in a month in one trip to the grocery store sometimes. I buy my kids fresh fruits and vegetables and scorn the white bread and canned soups she was sent away with. So giving up sweets – the Godiva chocolate chips and butter cookies that I keep stashed in my hidey cupboard above the refrigerator for stressed out moments - seems pretty insignificant if it is supposed to lead me to greater solidarity with the poor. And I know vanity is part of the reason I even do it. If I really wanted to do a painful fast, I’d give up caffeine. That would really make me dependent on God to get through the day. It’s humbling to realize how weak your will can be when fail at your fast – a good reminder that we need God, especially if we’re well-off enough to forget our needs sometimes.


Another reason to fast: Delaying gratification also increases appreciation. More on my shopping habits: to get to the cashiers at the commissary, you now have to walk through an aisle of Easter candy about 50 yds long, a veritable hallway of sugar. And if you shop at commissaries, you know there is always a wait. I usually try to shop without all the kids, but we happened to be short on time and milk this weekend, so we all had to go together. While we stood in line, my kids mmm’d and ahhh’d, and handled all the bags, poked the Peeps, shook the Skittles. And then my eight year old, who gave up chocolate, said, “All I really want is one really good chocolate bunny in my Easter basket.” Smart girl.


If my kids are eating chocolate cake on Good Friday, what will make Easter Sunday special? If we don’t experience privation, can we appreciate abundance? I want Lent to feel like a desert, even if it is only symbolic, so that Easter is more like paradise.


Thinking of Easter makes me think of yet another reason to voluntarily undergo privation: fasting makes us appreciate the blessings we have. Perhaps one of the things I miss most about not having a winter season here is that arrival of spring is barely noticeable. Few daffodils or tulips, few barren trees bursting into bud around the time of the Feast of the Resurrection. I was running the other day through a no mow space on base. A weed that reminded me of baby’s breath was sprouting everywhere. Suddenly I was transported to the lakeside road where my family vacationed in Michigan every summer when I was growing up. The ache of longing was strong enough to make me breathless, even though I had slowed down my pace. When I think of places where I want to live when we give up the wandering life, that area of the north springs to mind. Heaven is a little like Michigan in the summer, I imagine. Although my memory is colored by childhood nostalgia, my desire to return to Michigan is strengthened because I don’t live there. It’s a longing made stronger by absence, by exile. And it’s a longing that is accompanied by an overflowing of praise when it is fulfilled. Even the long drive on the way to the lake is a bearable penance because the anticipation of returning is a little intoxicating. The landmarks on the way are friends. You can’t help but be happy on summer vacation.


And you can’t help but give thanks when a fast is over. So as Holy Week gets underway, I’m going to try to pay a little closer attention to mortification, and to try to slow down a little even though the week ahead will be a full one.   Here is one last quote, from Pope Benedict's Lenten message, more eloquent than my long apologia:

Through the traditional practices of fasting, almsgiving and prayer, which are an expression of our commitment to conversion, Lent teaches us how to live the love of Christ in an ever more radical way. Fasting, which can have various motivations, takes on a profoundly religious significance for the Christian: by rendering our table poorer, we learn to overcome selfishness in order to live in the logic of gift and love; by bearing some form of deprivation – and not just what is in excess – we learn to look away from our “ego”, to discover Someone close to us and to recognize God in the face of so many brothers and sisters. For Christians, fasting, far from being depressing, opens us ever more to God and to the needs of others, thus allowing love of God to become also love of our neighbor (cf. Mk 12: 31).