Enrico Finotti
We no longer hear of fasting. Does it still have value or is it now a tradition of the past? How should we respond to those who ask us for information? Should we remind our children and our families? Or is it better to gloss over the issue?
Some extraordinary ministers of communion
The faithful no longer ask about fasting, but sometimes there is an awakening and this question is still skipped. In fact, secularization has made the minds of even the simple faithful dull to such an extent, that the question of religious fasting is outside the area of interest and is no longer sufficiently reiterated in preaching. In religious practice, therefore, corporal fasting seems to have disappeared, even if, in minimal doses, it is still commanded by the laws of the Church.
It should be noted that, if fasting seems to have disappeared from the practice of the Christian people, it has not lost its significance in today’s life. Indeed, fasting is proposed and practiced differently in our opulent society.
We can recall different forms of fasting: fasting for health, fasting for balance and physiological well-being; therapeutic fasting to regain health and maintain it; athletic fasting to achieve excellent sports performance; aesthetic fasting, to maintain good body shape, etc. Hence, fasting as such today does not undergo any crisis, but rather is on the increase.
Here, however, we are dealing specifically with religious fasting, which is required by the Word of God and by the laws of the Church for a regular and complete life of faith.
Two types of fasting must be distinguished in this regard: ascetic fasting and liturgical fasting. The first aims to enable the faithful to dominate themselves as a function of an evermore generous response to the will of God with regard to sanctification. Its forms and applications are very free according to the ability of each one and the will to grow in the sanctity of one’s state of life. The second is a public sign shared by the entire Christian people to call and make us participate in the mystery of the Lord’s Passion in preparation for the sacramental encounter with him risen and alive. In short, it is the celebration of the first aspect of the paschal mystery in order to gain fruitful access to the second aspect: per crucem ad lucem. Liturgical fasting is practiced with very different intensity and modalities over the centuries, especially in these three moments: preparation for sacramental communion (Eucharistic fasting); preparation for Sunday, the day of the resurrection (the penitential day of Friday); preparation for the annual solemnity of Easter (the penitential season of Lent). This is a general indication. It is currently known that real fasting is strictly prescribed by the Church only in three moments: the Eucharistic fast, that of Ash Wednesday and that of Good Friday. Remember that abstinence from meat is a reduced form of fasting itself.
Corporal fasting is not a negligible element in the life of faith, but Christ himself and the entire Tradition of the Church have celebrated its usefulness in the fight against sin, the purification of the spirit and the increase of the life of grace. The saints of all ages have given a constant and irrefutable testimony. The Church, despite the neglect of the times, never ceases to propose it to all Christians in the forms most in keeping with the environment and culture in which they live.
Unfortunately, fasting too has undergone undue secularization, the steps of which can be described as follows:
1. Discrediting corporal fasting. It is said that fasting is an analogue term, which refers to something else, for example: fasting from sins, vices, selfishness of various kinds, etc. In this sense, Isaiah’s words have been interpreted in an ideological way: “This is not the fasting I want: to loosen the unjust chains, etc.” (Is 58: 3-7). Furthermore, it is believed that this practice is not in conformity with current culture, social progress, today’s system of life and, some say, an enlightened and mature vision of the same faith. In this way fasting is deprived of its real content, is reduced to “language” and is taken as a word-symbol of other things considered, it is said, more authentic, more valid and effective. But is this the meaning and the practice of fasting offered to us by the Word of God in the history of salvation and by the example of Christ and the Saints? Has the Church hitherto erred in inducing us to a true corporal fast? And have the Saints themselves erred with their behaviors inspired by rigorous penances and effective corporal fasting?
2. Reduction of fasting and its replacement. The collapse of the concept of fasting inevitably follows that of the practice of the same. Since the canonical norms relating to fasting have a solid theological foundation in Sacred Scripture and a glorious and consistent history in the life of the Church throughout the centuries, it is not possible to completely eliminate fasting, but it can be reduced somewhat, to be almost only a memory, with no real impact on the life of the faithful, while still maintaining it canonically prescribed at least on the holiest days (eg ashes and Good Friday). The suppression of fasting on some great vigils and the replacement of abstinence from meat on normal Fridays with other alternatives are some of the examples. We see how much it can condition a certain mentality by influencing the canonical dispositions of the Church itself. Unfortunately, it is necessary to recognize that these “updates”, while legitimate in the pastoral care of the Church, have been exploited to the point of spreading, in fact, a total disregard for the need for penance, an element of divine right, and to almost totally remove the corporal fasting, without any other valid alternative.
3. The improper sense of liturgical fasting. Regarding the liturgical fast, relating to the mystery of the Lord’s Passion. we have gone from an objective, public and common vision to a subjective and individual vision. Liturgical fasting should not be evaluated on the basis of subjective criteria, as instead penitential and ascetic fasting is evaluated, but it constitutes a common sign, publicly exhibited by all the Christian people as a visible and compact testimony of the mystery of faith, which is about to be celebrated. In the abstinence from meat, for example, it does not matter if individually this practice does not constitute a significant renunciation, but what is valuable is to unite with a common objective sign that commands all to give a unanimous witness before the whole society: the annual announcement (Lent) or weekly (Friday) or daily (Eucharistic fast) of the Lord’s death in the perspective of the sacramental celebration at different levels of His paschal mystery. There has therefore been an undue subjectification of the value of liturgical fasting in place of its public and common dimension, as an act of worship of the Church as such, to which every good faithful joins.
4. The fascination of “secular fasting”. The crisis of fasting in the religious sphere has nevertheless met with the practice in the society of “secular fasting”, which often exhibits itself with a strong social impact. However, the “secular fast” is a horizontal fast, aimed at expressing solidarity with situations of emergency and danger or even at demonstrating protest and struggle in the political, humanitarian, economic and social spheres. It is not infrequent that even Christian communities, precisely in the name of dialogue and welcome and cooperation, adopt the modalities. Hence the variegated proposals that seem to want to update, at times correct, the penitential tradition of the Church. Thus it seems that fasting, thrown out of the door, returns through the window. But is not so. Christian fasting is above all an act of worship to God, a humble invocation of his mercy, an urgent request for forgiveness for our sins; then it is an act aimed at the sanctification of the soul, which is the first duty we have towards the Lord and our first responsibility; therefore it also becomes a gift of charity towards one’s neighbor and an invocation of grace for the whole world. As long as this cultic dimension is not taken up again in our fasting, we cannot consider it to be that true fasting that the Word of God commands us and which Revelation testifies to.
What to do then? It is necessary, with the humility of the little flock, to take up Christian fasting again with courage and to live it with generosity according to the perennial Tradition of the Church, following the example of the Saints, confident in the divine strength, through which these powerful means is given to us for our own sanctification and evangelization of the world.
(From La spada e la Parola. Il liturgista risponde, 2018©Chorabooks. Translated by Aurelio Porfiri. Used with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved)
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