Fasting

Fasting is another spiritual practice that has been misunderstood by so many, especially in our modern society. If a physician tells someone to fast for their physical health, the follow-up question is, "From what and for how long?" Yet, if the Church tells someone to fast for their spiritual health, there can be almost this gut reaction in our culture and people think the Church has overstepped. While books have been written on intermittent fasting for one's health, if you want to know more about fasting for one's spiritual health, a little more digging is required.

This year, I have had more people ask me about fasting than any other year I can remember. I love it! Some questions have come from people new to Anglicanism or looking in from the outside. Others have been Anglican for some time but never participated in the Lenten discipline. And others want to grow in their understanding. Whatever the reason, I count it as a win for their spiritual life.

The question of how to fast is given to us in the Prayer Book as abstaining from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and all other Fridays in Lent and throughout the year (li). What is described as fasting is limiting food to three meals, the sum of the first two equalling less than the third meal. To those who are able, I often suggest a complete fast (only water) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and find something else to give up during Lent (social media for example). During this time, we are to incorporate other extraordinary acts and devotion (i.e. praying the Litany). There are, of course, exemptions for those who should not or cannot fast (pregnant or nursing women, health issues, etc.); yet, all are called to participate in Lenten devotion and discipline as they are able. If you have questions about what this might look like for you or think your choice is too difficult or too easy come and talk to me. The more important questions that I wish to address here are not "how" but "why" and "in what manner".

The question "why" is answered in our Collect for the First Sunday of Lent, as we prayed that God might "Give us grace to use such abstinence, that our flesh being subdued to the Spirit we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness..." Fasting is a spiritual weapon that we have been given to subdue our sinful desires and form us into holiness. But here we must immediately turn to the "in what manner" for this is not the beating down of the flesh or thinking that our physical flesh is evil. The Anglican layman and member of the 'Inklings', Charles William, wrote in his essay "The Index of the Body" that, "The body was holily created, is holily redeemed, and is to be holily raised from the dead. It is, in fact, for all our difficulties with it, less fallen, merely in itself than the soul in which the quality of the will is held to reside; for it was a sin of the will which degraded us." Let us not forget the physical hope of the resurrection in our fasts and preparation to celebrate it.

We fast to heal our souls and form in us the image of God. As St. Basil, in his First Homily on Fasting, says, "Let us acquire the disposition that we have been taught [by Jesus], not looking gloomy on the days of fasting we are currently observing, but cheerfully disposed toward them, as is fitting for the saints. Do not be gloomy while you are being healed. It is absurd not to rejoice in the soul's health, and rather to sorrow over change in food and to appear to favor the pleasures of the stomach over the care of the soul. After all, while self-indulgence gratifies the stomach, fasting brings gain to the soul. Be cheerful since the physician has given you sin-destroying medicine." This echoes the words of Christ in Matthew 6, who commands us not to fast as the Pharisees do: "Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast." Our reward is not our self-righteousness, rather, we are to rejoice in the healing work of God in our souls.

As we enter into Lent, our fasting and Lenten disciplines should have Holy Week and Easter as the end goal. The 17th century Anglican Bishop Thomas Ken says, "A devout soul, that is able duly to observe [Lent], fastens himself to the cross on Ash Wednesday, and hangs crucified by contrition all the Lent long [so that] he may by his own crucifixion be better disposed to be crucified with Christ on Good Friday." Our fasting and Lenten devotions have a purpose with an end. If, when you think of Lent, dread flashes across your face, look to its telos (ultimate goal/end) in the resurrection of Christ. In The Sacrament of Easter, Jeremy Haselock provides the insight that "Lent should not be observed as if the Church was awaiting redemption, but rather, believers, having the sign of the Cross on their foreheads, should spend the season in attempting to make themselves better conformed to Christ's death, in order that the Resurrection might always be experienced in the clearest manner possible."

et posui faciem meam ad Dominum Deum,

Fr. Aaron