Fasting

Today is the first day of Lent in the Roman Church (it started Monday in Eastern churches). Lent, as we all know, is a season of prayer and fasting and abstinence (though the fasting is rather minor nowdays compared to the old days).

I think a lot of people don't fully understand the value of fasting. It tends to be looked at merely as a way to make a sacrifice to God, or worse, a way of making ourselves voluntarily suffer. While it does have a value as a sacrifice, left out of this equation is the value it has in disciplining our passions and keeping our minds clear.

The most important thing that fasting does is it helps us gain control over our passions — that is, our emotions, desires, and "sensitive appetite". St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians,

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Cor 9:24-27)

St. Paul uses athletic language to show what a Christian is called to do. Just as athletes deny themselves all sorts of things to discipline their bodies so they perform well, so it is with Christians, and fasting is the chief form of achieve it.

Remember how St. James talks about the tongue as a rudder that controls the whole body (James 3:4)? Something similar is true with our appetite. If we control and discipline our appetite for food, we will also control and discipline our appetite for sex, for material things, for control over other people, and so forth. Denying ourselves food allows us to gain control over the rest of our body's appetites. If we successfuly discipline our desire for food, the results will "spill over" into other areas of our lives. This is one of the main points of fasting.

Fasting also allows one's mind to operate more clearly. Ever find yourself not quite as sharp after a big meal, unable to think clearly? That's because an abundance of food clouds the mind. And fasting helps clear it. Rules for abstinence also follow similar reasoning: meat and even dairly products weigh heavily on the mind, and one is spiritually more sharp without them. (Also abstinence from meat hearkens back to the Garden of Eden and the time before Noah, to which we will return at the end of time.)

An interesting aside: Note that Jesus said, "When you fast ..." (Mt 6:16), not "if you fast". Jesus assumed that his followers would be fasting on a regular basis!

I say that fasting is not a form of voluntary suffering because we aren't called to inflict suffering on ourselves per se. We talk about the value of enduring suffering and "lifting it up" and so forth, but this is intended for involuntary suffering. Fasting and other forms of self-denial are a form of ascesis, which may superficially resemble self-inflicted suffering but is very different. Ascesis involves abstaining from indulgence for the purpose of self-discipline, of putting to death the passions of the flesh (as St. Paul puts it). The ultimate goal of ascesis is not to suffer, but to gain self-mastery. Suffering should never be regarded as an end, but as incidental to the whole process of ascesis.

So, fasting and abstinence are prescribed by the church not so much for their sacrificial value as the positive effect they have on our souls: they discipline our passions and keep our minds clear. These are things the ancients understood implicitly but which have been lost in the mists of time.