Intro to Fast and Abstinence 101

Concord Pastor ^ | February 25, 2009 | Concord Pastor

[NYer]

There are particular days of fast and abstinence in Lent when the whole Church participates in this Lenten practice as a community of believers. But individual Christians are invited to fast in ways that each determines from his/her own experience and circumstances. The following reflections might be helpful to all of us as we consider fasting in the season ahead of us.

Here's what the Lord says of fasting through the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 58:

Is this the manner of fasting I wish,
of keeping a day of penance:
That a man bow his head like a reed,
and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the LORD?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own...
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted...

Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.
He will renew your strength,
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring whose water never fails.

+ + +

In the same spirit, the following advice is convincing and compelling as we face a Lenten fast:

Lent is a season that calls us:

to fast from discontent and to feast on gratitude;
to fast from anger and to feast on patience;
to fast from bitterness and to feast on forgiveness;
to fast from self-concern and to feast on compassion;
to fast from discouragement and to feast on hope;
to fast from laziness and to feast on commitment;
to fast from complaining and to feast on acceptance;
to fast from lust and to feast on respect;
to fast from prejudice and to feast on understanding;
to fast from resentment and to feast on reconciliation;
to fast from lies and to feast on the truth;
to fast from wasted time and to feast on honest work;
to fast from grimness and to feast on joy;
to fast from suspicion and to feast on trust;
to fast from idle talk and to feast on prayer and silence;
to fast from guilt and to feast on the mercy of God.

(Based on a version often attributed to William Arthur Ward)

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Still not convinced? Spiritual writer Thomas Merton fillets some of our standard Lenten practices with a very sharp blade:

Such exercises as fasting cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal meditation. We have to think of what we are doing, and the reasons for our actions must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love. Otherwise, our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real interior meaning. Sacrifices made in this formalistic spirit tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety and not for the sake of love. In that case, however, our attention will tend to fix itself upon the insignificant suffering which we have piously elected to undergo, and to exaggerate it in one way or another, either to make it seem unbearable or else to make it seem more heroic than it actually is. Sacrifices made in this fashion would be better left unmade. It would be more sincere as well as more religious to eat a full dinner in a spirit of gratitude than to make some minor sacrifice a part of it, with the feeling that one is suffering martyrdom.

-Thomas Merton in The Climate of Monastic Prayer

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The reflections above speak to our individual choices regarding fasting in Lent. Here are the laws regarding our communal fasting as a Church:

ASH WEDNESDAY and GOOD FRIDAY*
are days of FAST and ABSTINENCE

What does that mean?

On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday,
Catholics over 14 years of age
are expected to abstain from eating meat on this day.
Catholics 18 years of age
and up to the beginning of their 60th year
are expected to fast on these days:
taking only one full meal and two other light meals,
eating nothing between meals.
(liquids between meals, however, are allowed).

*Holy Saturday is a day of fast for the elect,
those who are to be baptized at the Easter Vigil.
While fasting is not required of all the faithful,
this is an ancient tradition on this day and a great way
to support those who are to be baptized.

All the FRIDAYS of Lent are days of ABSTINENCE

What does that mean?

Catholics over 14 years of age
Are expected to abstain from eating meat
on the Fridays of Lent.

+ + +

Health concerns and “doctor’s orders”
should take precedence over the practices of fast and abstinence.
Fast and abstinence should never jeopardize one’s physical health.

DISPENSATIONS?

Pastors often receive requests from parishioners asking to be “dispensed” from fast and abstinence for particular social occasions. Of course, it is precisely on such occasions that the self-denial of fast and abstinence might be most meaningful. Such a “dispensation” is not a pastor’s to give. The Church tells us that in this matter individuals have freedom to excuse themselves but that, “no Catholic will lightly hold himself/herself excused from so hallowed an obligation as this penitential practice.”

-ConcordPastor 2009LentPostCollection

[NYer]

Some additional inspiration.

[NYer]

Lenten ping!

[eastsider]

Rattlesnake for dinner tonight.

[jjm2111]

Ugh. I hate fasting. It is a very healthy spiritual practice and nothing makes me more grateful for the amount and quality of food at my fingertips and empathy for those who go hungry. But oh does it suck.

[Pyro7480]

Rattlesnake doesn’t count as meat??

[eastsider]

It's my understanding that the distinguishing characteristic of "meat" in the fasting sense is that the protein comes from a warm-blooded animal. Rattlesnakes are cold-blooded; ergo, they're not "meat."

[Marie Antoinette]

I always wondered about that. We always had fish on Fridays, but I didn’t know *why* fish wasn’t considered meat.

We’re having eggs for dinner. :)

[Marie Antoinette]

Surely eggs are okay?

[nina0113]

Pierogis, sauteed in butter with onions, sweet’n’sour red cabbage, and sour cream. I don’t really like fish except for shellfish, and scarfing lobsters every Friday is kinda missing the point.

[eastsider]

We’re having eggs for dinner. :)

Caviar, I presume : )

[eastsider]

Pierogis, sauteed in butter with onions, sweet’n’sour red cabbage, and sour cream.

Yum, yum, yum!!!

[nina0113]

Surely eggs are okay?

They are NOW - used to be that's why everyone ate pancakes on Mardi Gras, to use up the eggs before Lent. I wonder if that's part of why baby chicks are associated with Easter - since they couldn't eat the eggs, they'd let them hatch?

My mom has a cookbook with recipes reprinted from the old abstinence directives. It used to be much stricter. This is basically just hungry enough to keep you mindful of what day it is.

[LiteKeeper]

Where is the biblical warrant for lent?

[Pyro7480]

Matthew 6: 2-4, 16-18
Matthew 17: 20

[Marie Antoinette]

Thank you. I went looking around. I have 25 dozen eggs right now (my hens won’t quit until fall) and it would be a shame if we couldn’t eat them! We’re pretty hungry, I hear lots of stomach growling going on. LOL.

[diamond6]

I just discovered the most awesome clam chowder recipe. I wanted to make it for Ash Wednesday and for Fridays. I wanted something simple and easy. Oh my gosh....

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/My-Best-Clam-Chowder/Detail.aspx

The only changes I made were, I used a cup of flour (instead of 3/4) and stirred it with the melted butter for about 4 minutes until it was really thick, then I added 1 pint (2 Cups) of cream and approx 3 Cups of Whole Milk. After everything is combined. I used a stick hand blender on the simmering vegetables and clam juice, then added it to the mik mixture until it was all creamy. I did add about 10 baby carrots instead of the 1 Cup of carrots.

This is a keeper!!

[NYer]

Surely eggs are okay?

Not in the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches where they fast from meat, eggs, oil, and a lot of other foods during Lent. Then again, these traditions are cultural where they have developed dishes over the years that are filled with grains, beans and greens. (I had an egg for lunch ;-)

[LiteKeeper]

?? I am afraid I see nothing of Lent in those passages. How do you see that?

[the invisib1e hand]

ugh. The problem with being an uncatechised convert is that I forgot and had bacon and eggs right after noon mass.