As we were beginning our Lenten journey this year, I shared with you some thoughts from Pope Benedict on the role of fasting in this holy season. As a follow up to that Visit I am happy to present this guest-written column from Father Dan Merz. Fr. Merz is a priest of our Diocese of Jefferson City who is currently the vice rector and dean of students at Conception Seminary College. He gives us here some thoughts on fasting that he recently shared with the seminarians at Conception.
Why do Catholics fast before receiving Holy Communion? It is not that there is something incompatible between the Body and Blood of Christ and other food. In the early Church, and to a lesser extent still today, there were two fasts. There was the “total fast” that preceded all major feasts or sacramental events. The ancient Latin name for this fast was “statio” (station) from the verb “sto, stare” — to stand watch, on guard, or in vigil. The second fast was a fast of abstinence from certain foods, e.g. meats or fats. This was more an act of self-discipline and self-control. Notice that the former was a total fast as a means of watching and waiting — for something. The latter was more general and personal — to help become more disciplined or self-controlled.
The total fast was a preparation for Sunday Eucharist. We are all still required to keep this total fast for at least an hour before receiving Holy Communion (in the past, the length varied from three to 12 hours). Holy Communion is what breaks this fast. Jesus said that we don’t fast while the bridegroom is here (Matthew 9:15). In other words, what we’re keeping vigil for has arrived; the wait is over. The “total fast” is always for a brief, determined period in preparation for the coming of the bridegroom. The fast of abstinence, on the other hand, is what we do, for example, during the holy season of Lent, and requires a longer and more consistent period of time because the point is trying to break bad habits or form good habits. The Eucharist, then, is always the end of a preparation. It is always the fulfillment of an expectation. Fasting is always preparatory.
Why do Christians fast in general? Christian fasting is revealed in the interdependence between two events in the Bible: the “breaking of the fast” by Adam and Eve; and the “keeping of the fast” by Christ at the beginning of His ministry.
In the first chapters of Genesis, we read about the “breaking of the fast” by Adam and Eve. Humanity’s “fall” away from God and into sin began with eating. God had proclaimed a fast from the fruit of that one tree, and Adam and Eve broke it. Fasting is here connected with the very mystery of life and death, of salvation and damnation. Food perpetuates life in this physical world, which is subject to decay and death. But God “created no death” (Wisdom 1:13). Humanity, in Adam and Eve, rejected a life dependent on God alone for one that was dependent rather on “bread alone.” The whole world was given to man as a kind of food, as a means to life, but “life” is meant as communion with God, not as food. (“Their god is their belly.” Philippians 3:19) The tragedy is not so much that Adam ate food, but that he ate the food for its own sake, “apart” from God and to be independent of Him. Believing that food had life in itself, and thus he could be “like God,” Adam put his faith in food. This kind of existence seems to be built on the principle that man does indeed live “by bread alone.”
Christ, however, is the new Adam. At the beginning of His ministry in the Gospel of Matthew, we read, “When He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He became hungry.” (Matthew 4:2) Hunger is that state in which we realize our dependence on something else — when we face the ultimate question: “on what does my life depend?” Satan tempted both Adam and Christ, saying: “Eat, for your hunger is proof that you depend entirely on food, that your life is in food.” Adam believed and ate. Christ said, “Man does NOT live by bread alone.”
This liberates us from total dependence on food, on matter, on the world. Thus, for the Christian, fasting is the only means by which man recovers his true spiritual nature. Catholic tradition says that Satan is overcome by “fasting and prayer.” In order, then, for fasting to be effective, the Holy Spirit must be a part of it. Christian fasting has nothing to do with losing weight. It’s a matter of prayer and the Spirit. And because of that, because it is truly a place of the Spirit, true fasting will lead to temptation, and weakness and doubt and irritation. In other words, it will be a real fight between good and evil, and very likely we shall fail many times in these battles. But the very discovery of the Christian life as “fight” and “effort” is the essential aspect of fasting.
I can name at least seven reasons for fasting:
1.) Sin entered into the world because Adam and Eve broke the fast
2.) For the Christian, fasting is ultimately about fasting from sin
3.) Fasting reveals our dependence on God and not the resources of this world
4.) Fasting is an ancient way of preparing for the Eucharist — the truest of foods
5.) Fasting is preparation for baptism (and all the sacraments) — reception of grace
6.) It is a means of saving resources to give to the poor
7.) It is a means of self-discipline/chastity/the restraining of the appetites.
