Fasting and self-denial

However, we do have coming up the second of the two days in the year when we are required to fast and abstain from meat according to the rule of the Church – Good Friday.  Also, in some way the whole of Lent and Eastertide is a model for the rest of our lives – All of us need to practise fasting and self-denial if we are to enter into joy.  So what exactly is intended by such a fast?  Why deny ourselves?  What is the point?

Before I attempt an answer to the question about why we fast, I shall first explore ways of fasting and doing penance that are false, as it were spiritual dead ends. Our Lord describes one: “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt. 6.15 ff).   Analogously to the way in which we should give alms, the practice of fasting should not be a parade of self, but an act of ascesis, spiritual self-discipline that is essentially private, even in some sense from ourselves! ‘Let not your left hand know what your right hand is doing’ (Matt 6.3) Isidore the Priest, one of the desert fathers said, 'If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride, but if you think highly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat. It is better for a man to eat meat than to be inflated with pride and to glorify himself.'  The Catechism of the Catholic Church comments austerely that ‘An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting )"in order to be seen by men")’,while Pope Paul VI affirms:  ‘Against the real and ever recurring danger of formalism and pharisaism, the Divine Master in the New Covenant openly condemned—and so have the Apostles, Fathers and supreme pontiffs—any form of penitence which is purely external. The intimate relationship which exists in penitence between the external act, inner conversion, prayer and works of charity is affirmed and widely developed in the liturgical texts and authors of every era.’[2]

A second false approach to fasting and other penances, which may or may not share in the elements of self-parade that undermines the first, is undertaking them to the point of consciously setting out to do things that we know do lasting harm to our physical health with that as an end in view, or at any rate with a foolhardy disregard of the fact.  This sort of fasting and self-harm is notable among pagan religions – the Hindu religion for example has multiple stories of people exercising yogic postures until the limbs are ossified and can no longer be straightened, or burning themselves, or casting themselves to be crushed to death in front of the  Juggernaut as it was carried in procession, (though sources regard this as a practice that has lost its vogue).

However,  lest we feel smugly that Christians are immune from such things, we have the devotional practices of our Catholic Filipino brethren, who literally put themselves through the pains of Our Lord’s Passion, to look to:   

Penances outwardly similar to this sort of thing are modelled to Catholics by some canonised saints, notably St Rose of Lima who ‘wore constantly a metal spiked crown on her head and an iron chain tied around her waist,… fasted completely from all food for several days at a time, taking only gall mixed with bitter herbs as a kind of mortification of sustenance, … [and] when  she became exhausted,…would lie down on a bed she constructed of broken glass, stone, and thorns.(Catholic encyclopaedia.)  Other saints, such as Catherine of Siena, Blessed Alexandrina da Costa and the Servant of God Floripes de Jesús lived for years on the Eucharist alone, whilst St. John Vianney went in for long fasts, flagellation and sleep deprivation.

About such practices, however, the Church has always held that for the most part they are more for admiration than for imitation. They should be undertaken only with great caution, under guidance, and not as an end in themselves.   The real need for prudence in this area has been recognised since the time of the desert fathers.  For example, Antony the great, looked to as the founder of Christian monasticism, warns: 'Some have afflicted their bodies by asceticism, but they lack discernment, and so they are far from God.'[3]   Mortification is a means, not an end – indeed practicing mortification for physical pleasure is sinful.   Any excessive self-damaging behaviour that is also life-threatening such as fasting to the point of starvation, with that end in view, is extremely harmful both at a physical and at a spiritual level.The fact that through excess of love great saints achieve miraculous fasts is no reason for us to undertake self-starvation from motives of self-aggrandisement!  People suffering from any kind of psychological illness –  eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, or, in a religious form, scrupulosity, are discouraged from undertaking any kind of extra mortification – for such people, obeying their spiritual and medical advisors is a sufficient exercise in humility, if what they truly desire is spiritual growth.   For the majority of people, much of the time, bearing with fortitude the slings and arrows of fortune that arise daily is a good starting place for mortification.  As the children in Fatima were told by the angel that they encountered: ‘’Above all, bear and accept with patience the sufferings God will send you.’  If you are unable to get through a day without snarling at the people you live with, committing minor acts of petty theft of office biscuits, leering at pretty people on the internet, planning in your imagination acts of revenge against your enemies, casual gluttony and sloth, careless lying, endless complaining,  idle gossip, perhaps now is not the time to start with scourging yourself or lying on a bed of thorns! 

Another problem with self-inflicted severe penances is that the practice of them may arise from an inadequate sense of the love of God.  As Dom Bosco told the young Dominic Savio when he found the lad undertaking voluntary self-mortification by putting sharp objects in his bed, ‘The way to be a saint, is to be always cheerful, do your duties to the best of your ability, and give… a good example. Keep in mind that the Lord Jesus is always with you and wants your happiness."[4]

 A third sort of trap in pursuing penances is what I would dub ‘spiritual arithmetic.’  I mean by this having a sense that our penances, if we undertake them, are to be measured and weighed against our sins in a sort of quid pro quo basis  - making a habit of collecting plenary indulgences, worrying intensely if the day’s prescribed set of devotions and penances is incomplete.  Whilst there is a venerable and honourable tradition of giving things up for Lent, doing novenas and First Fridays and the like, one needs to be aware of the folly of imagining that any penance could somehow put God in debt to us.  We need to accept that penances, no matter how severe, rather than having any objective force that makes God owe us something, are tokens for us,  to remind ourselves that God accepts these from us as our Loving Father.  This does not mean we should increase them:   It is easy to pile up exterior practices – the error is to make these the foundation of ones striving towards holiness, whilst allowing ones besetting sins to continue to fester in one’s heart – enemies remaining unforgiven, vanity and pride unchecked, whilst one obsesses about a few extra mouthfuls eaten on a fasting day. 

A final way of misunderstanding fasting is to see it as a way of dieting, or as a sort of spiritual work-out.  I have dieted this Lent.  It is no bad time to do so, but the motivations are or should be entirely different from those of fasting, although the behaviours may be similar or identical.  A good diet is directed towards teaching a person to have a healthy attitude towards eating, but to that end causes one to think a great deal about food, to eat mindfully and to self-focussedly log ‘successes’ in the journey towards health.  It is not bad, but it is not fasting! A spiritual version of this is to hope to ‘succeed’ with one’s Lenten resolutions, and to give oneself a hearty pat on the back for the spiritual progress one has made.  As a sermon I heard at the beginning of Lent pointed out, the disciplines of Lent are not an end in themselves – they are like the manure in the parable of the barren fig tree, put in to make us bear fruit – and although a real gardener may like to show people their compost heap, the purpose of the compost heap is not itself, but the beautiful fruits and flowers that will be produced.

However, despite the many caveats, it is still the case that prayer, fasting and almsgiving are integral to the Christian way of life.  Top of FormPenitential practices involving mortification – which literally translated means putting the flesh to death- form part of our tradition as Catholics, and this tradition has sound roots in Scripture.  The Old Testament contains multiple accounts of people fasting and wearing sackcloth and ashes as a sign of their inner repentance, or as a way of intensifying a prayer of petition.[5]   Such fasts, however, when not accompanied by appropriate conversion of heart, were often not acceptable to God:

‘Is such the fast that I choose,
    a day for a man to humble himself?
Is it to bow down his head like a rush,
    and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him?
Will you call this a fast,
    and a day acceptable to the Lord?

⁶ “Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of wickedness,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
   and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?’ (Isa 58.5 ff)y6

True fasting as portrayed in the Old Testament should emerge in acts of love as well as of repentance: ‘Prayer with fasting is good, but better than both is almsgiving with righteousness.’(Tobit 12:8)

And it is even a sign of joy in the Lord:  As Zechariah has it: ‘The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth, shall be seasons of joy and gladness, and cheerful festivals for the house of Judah: therefore love truth and peace.’ (Zech8.19)

Turning to the New Testament, we have our example in Our Saviour Himself.  The life of Christ on earth  was marked out by bodily penances, culminating in the Cross, and our own patterning of our lives upon His must include some such penance.  Our Lord tells us that "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt 16:24), whilst St. Paul writes ‘If you live a life of nature, you are marked out for death; if you mortify the ways of nature through the power of the Spirit, you will have life.’ (Romans 8:13)   There is no way to achieve holiness without ‘renunciation and spiritual battle’, since ‘the way of perfection passes by way of the Cross’[6]

Many of the saints throughout the history of the Church followed this path – Notable among them is St John Vianney, who  ‘was outstanding in a unique way in voluntary affliction of his body; his only motives were the love of God and the desire for the salvation of the souls of his neighbors, and this led him to abstain almost completely from food and from sleep, to carry out the harshest kinds of penances, and to deny himself with great strength of soul’ (Pope John XXIII ) What is of interest is his explicit motivation of bringing souls to Christ in very great numbers.

There is a temptation in these softer times to think of mortification as being part of a vanishing spirituality that is clung to by the morbid: but recent theology reaffirms the need for fasting and for other forms of mortification: in the Catechism of the Catholic Church it says that “There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes’[7]  Whilst this is aimed primarily at ‘interior conversion’,  such conversion ‘urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance."[8]

Pope John XXIII, convenor of the Second Vatican Council, taught in his encyclical,  Paenitentiam Agere

the faithful must also be encouraged to do outward acts of penance, both to keep their bodies under the strict control of reason and faith, and to make amends for their own and other people's sins…. besides bearing in a Christian spirit the inescapable annoyances and sufferings of this life, the faithful ought also take the initiative in doing voluntary acts of penance and offering them to God.... Since, therefore, Christ has suffered in the flesh," it is only fitting that we be "armed with the same intent."

Pope Paul VI also reaffirmed the need for physical acts:

“The necessity of mortification of the flesh stands clearly revealed if we consider the fragility of our nature, in which, since Adam’s sin, flesh and spirit have contrasting desires. This exercise of bodily mortification—far removed from any form of stoicism—does not imply a condemnation of the flesh which the Son of God deigned to assume. On the contrary, mortification aims at the 'liberation' of man.”[9]

According to the Catechism there are ‘many forms of penance in Christian life,’ but pre-eminently fasting, prayer and almsgiving, upon which Scripture and the Fathers ‘insist above all’, as these ‘express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, to others.’ . (CCC1434)   

So the first, most basic penitential act is directed towards conversion of life in relation to God through prayer.  Given the common understanding of penance, how is prayer, which is the raising of the heart and mind to God in order to be in right relationship with Him to be seen as an act of self-denial?   Surely penance of its nature should be something painful? Here the basic meaning of the word ascesis helps:  The word is a Greek one, and had two stages of meaning:  first, an activity, from working raw materials to worshipping a divinity in an artistic manner,  to work, to build, to adorn, to fashion or to make.[10]  This meaning found its way into the noun askesis, meaning something like artistry or skill. 

In its second phase the word becomes more focussed upon physical training , ^[11] which led finally to the metaphorical use of the word for spiritual exercise, involving pursuit or practice of ‘higher virtues (such as justice or temperance)’ is understood.  This leads seamlessly to the usage of  Gregory of Nyssa (335-394AD) who ‘defines an ascetic process as imitatio Christi, in which Jesus Christ is the model for the emergence of a distinctly Christian way of life’.  Against this backdrop, which views asceticism variously as making and doing, exercising and artistry, and finally imitation of Christ, the place of prayer becomes clear.  The analogy with physical training does also imply effort in prayer - tears of repentance, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness.   Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance. The aim of the game is increase in love of God and of our neighbour. 

Prayer, we read in the Sermon on the mount, should pre-eminently be private,(Mt 6.5-7) but Our Lord also recommends two other ways of praying – the prayer of two or three together, which He promises will be heard,(Mt 18.19) and the prayer in the temple, which requires reconciliation with one’s enemies,but given this, also is included among appropriate ways of giving homage to God.(Mt5.24).  For Catholics the seasons of Penance given by the Church ‘are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice.’  CCC1438 including prayer, whether practiced publicly, in a group, or in the privacy of one’s own room.

Almsgiving, the second form of Lenten  pentitential practice regards relations with one’s neighbour:  practice may include seeking reconciliation, and the practice of charity through concern for the poor, defence of justice and right, ‘let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!(Amos 5.24) Learn to do right; seek justice.  Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.(Isa 1.17) – Or, in our day, write to your MP to resist the proposed euthanasia bill;  Demand justice for the unborn; give water and food to the poor on our streets; pray for and promote peace. ‘Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?’ (Isa 58.6)

The third way of penance is in relation to oneself: revision of life, examination of conscience, turning from daily faults, nurturing the virtues, and it is here that bodily mortification, fasting and other modes of self-denial come into play. It is here also that the temptation to be focussed upon ones own efforts comes in.  In weight watchers the mantras are all about ‘achievement.’   ‘You have done it, you have secured your points, you have achieved your daily goal.’  The aim of Christian ascesis is other.  If at the end of Lent you feel a bit low, a bit humbled, a bit inadequate to the task, you have probably been doing it right, as a growth in humility is crucial.  A spiritual advisor of mine used to say to me that many want humility, but few want humiliation.  Yet humiliation, taken rightly, is the stuff of humility.  The story of the Prodigal Son is a case in point: the ‘extreme misery’ and ‘deep humiliation’ bring the prodigal to the place where he can reflect on what he has lost, to repentance and return to the Father.  All these elements – including the welcome with ring and robe and feast – are characteristic of the process of conversion that is the end of all true penance, and every penitential practice, (cf CCC 1439)

So why do we do this?  What is fasting and self-denial for?

It is in essence to pattern ourselves upon Christ in humility and in love. As we walk the Way of the Cross or listen to the narratives of the Passion on Palm Sunday and Good Friday,  this acceptance of Christ as our exemplar, ideally, should emerge in spiritual growth, that growth in virtues, which comes about through grace. This ‘grace’ is the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to change our innermost dispositions, our hearts.  Individual virtuous-looking acts are not enough if there is no change of heart – we need to be changed in such a way that it will emerge in real action, and such action needs to become somehow ‘co-natural’ to us, that we are truly conformed to Christ.

All of this of course will come only through the grace of God, but we can make ready the ground, provide as it were the fertiliser.  The ground and basis of our growth towards conformity with Christ is in humility grounded in charity.  It is this, not self-aggrandisement, self-abuse or self-improvement that must lie at the heart of every ascetical practice.  As Cajetan says,

“In Paradise there are many Saints who never gave alms on earth: their poverty justified them. There are many Saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting or wearing hair shirts: their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many Saints too who were not virgins: their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no Saint who was not humble.”[12] 

At the beginning of Lent we were presented with Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, in which Our Lord re-capitulated and overcame both the primaeval temptations of Adam and Eve, and the temptations faced by the people of Israel in the wilderness.  As St Gregory says. ‘The old enemy tempted the first man through his belly, when he persuaded him to eat of the forbidden fruit; through ambition when he said, You shall be as gods; through covetousness when he said, Knowing good and evil; for there is a covetousness not only of money, but of greatness, when a high estate above our measure is sought.’ 

In the desert the whole nation of Israel is tempted and overcome in the same three-fold  manner – they crave the fleshpots of Egypt, they turn to false gods, and they mistrust the God Who has saved them. 

This three-fold temptation of the Lord, which He constantly overcomes,  continues throughout His earthly life, and has been resisted by Him even as a tiny infant – He Who could have been had every luxury, been born in a palace, worshipped as the True Messiah instead is born in absolute poverty, in a stable, as one soon to be driven into exile in a foreign land.  In His public ministry  the temptations come again and again – He hungers and thirsts, though He is able to make food out of nothing; the people wish to make Him King, and He evades them; the demons proclaim Him as the Holy One of God, and He silences them.

Again in the Garden of Gethsemane the three-fold theme is revisited:  Christ is in an agony, sweating blood and, and praying that the Cup of suffering pass Him by.  He is abandoned and betrayed by His friends who should be with Him to strengthen and defend Him, and He is arrested by soldiers when He could summon legions of Angels to destroy them.

Jesus goes through three trials – The Jewish authorities condemn Him for blasphemy, Pilate on the ground of expediency and political advantage, Herod as a rival king.  Each legal entity inflicts their particular form of torture and humiliation upon Him – The roughing up by the Jewish soldiers, the mockery of His Kingship by Herod’s men, and the judicial beating by Pilate’s minions. 

This three-fold patterning continues in the Passion:  Our Lord on the Way is forced to carry the means of His own death, driven to such weakness that the soldiers get Him the unwilling assistance of a passer-by, and finally He is stripped of His garments.

On the Cross again the pattern repeats – He is offered, but refuses wine mixed with myrrh, which modern commentators think was a kind of pain-killer, so He was rejecting any kind of physical comfort; the passers-by promise belief if He will only come down from the Cross, and He reaches the point of desolation which wrings from Him the cry ‘My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?’

In death He is given the sketchiest sort of preparation for the tomb; The tomb itself is a favour granted by the political leader who condemned Him and the religious leaders who refused to acknowledge Him publicly; and yet His power is still feared, and the tomb is under guard, in the wise foolishness and courageous cowardice of those who set a lock on a tomb and a guard over a man dead.

What does this mean for us?  It means that the temptations that assail us,  to pleasure at the expense of our own dignity or that of others, to controlling others, and to pride in all its many-facetted manifestations, are part of the process that nailed Our Lord to the Cross – but they are also thereby healed and forgiven, things which need no longer tie us down.  Our three-fold ascesis of prayer, fasting and almsgiving relate to this three-fold patterning – prayer to turning from setting ourselves up through pride in the place of God,  fasting to mitigating our constant self-pampering, almsgiving by setting the good of others above our own, dealing with the world, the flesh and the devil

Therefore, as Paul VI wrote:,

 following the Master, every Christian must renounce himself, take up his own cross and participate in the sufferings of Christ. Thus transformed into the image of Christ's death, he is made capable of meditating on the glory of the resurrection. Furthermore, following the Master, he can no longer live for himself, but must live for Him who loves him and gave Himself for him. He will also have to live for his brethren, completing "in his flesh that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ...for in the benefit of his body, which is the church."[13]

If we fear the pain of denying our desires, of humiliation, of loss of control, we should know He has been there before us, and is with us to hold and sustain us in our weakest and lowest moments.  And if at the end of Lent we feel we have failed, that as vines we have produced only bitterness, we should remember that though He refused the wine and the myrrh, Our Lord accepted the vinegar.  And in three days He rose from the dead.