Fasting
The Prayerbook states there are days of fasting or abstinence throughout the year, and there are surprising amount of them: the forty days of Lent, Ember Days, 3 Rogation Days, all the Fridays of the year, and the vigils before the feasts of Christmas Day, Pentecost, St John the Baptist, All Saints, and St Andrew. There are also ‘Greater Fasts’, which are Ash Wednesday and Holy Week. If we were faithful prayerbook Anglicans we would then be fasting or abstaining for about a hundred days each year. However, I doubt that most Anglicans have done so since the first Prayerbook in 1549. In fact, the only modern Christians still to take fasting seriously that I know of are Christians in the Eastern Orthodox Churches. It is not uncommon, even today, among the laity of these Churches for Lent to be kept as a strict fast, with no meat, oil, or wine consumed throughout the six weeks until the feast of Easter Day.
So, as modern Anglicans, why not simply own up to our actual practise and abandon the whole idea of fasts and fasting as part of our Church year? Why keep something going that we don’t actually do? Wouldn’t that be honest and avoid the charge of hypocrisy that the present situation of having fast days without fasting rather reflects?
Yes, abandoning fast days would be a more accurate representation of modern Anglican Christianity. The problem with that option is that it is not one our Lord Jesus Christ would have expected during his earthly ministry.
If Christianity is about following Christ Jesus, then we have to admit that Jesus not only fasted himself but expected the same practice from his disciples. Fasting was for hm a significant spiritual discipline. On one occasion, when his disciples were having trouble exorcising a demon, Jesus did so, telling them afterwards it could only be exorcised with prayer and fasting. Now, it is unlikely that most of us are going into the ministry of exorcism. However, Jesus clearly expected his disciples would fast because the discipline forms of the subjects in his teaching. ‘When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret.’ (Mt. 6.17).
So fasting is an expected part of discipleship, according to Jesus’ teaching. The question then becomes why and how? Why is it important? And how do we do it in this day and age?
Well, there are a lot of possible answers to why fast, but the one I find helpful is that it is part of the training of ourselves in a Christian way of life. It has always seemed to me that Christianity makes sense only if it is practised as a way of life. That is, if Christianity is true, then the best evidence for that truth is not in the doctrines of the Church but in the lives of Christians. However, like any worthwhile feat of human living - excellence in sport, music, art, or a trade - excellence in following Christ Jesus (Christian living) comes with training.
We might think of Christian living as an art. As something unique and beneficial to the well-being of individuals and of humanity. When the Christian life as an art of living is brought to flourish it shows how human life can be lived with love, and service, and freedom. Wars of religion, inquisitions, Christian slanging matches, and so on, turn people off. But the art of Christian living developed as we see it in the saints is attractive and draws people to Christ. However, such attractive lives cannot occur without discipline, without training. Part of such training in the art of Christian living is fasting.
So what is fasting? The best answer I know of comes from a Russian priest and spiritual director of last century, Father Yelchaninov.
The important element of fasting is not the fact of not eating this or that, or of depriving oneself of something by way of punishment. Fasting is but a tested method . . . to achieve the refinement of spiritual capacities obstructed by the flesh, and thus facilitating our approach to God.
In a society obsessed by the physical - be it sex, food, wealth - our spiritual capacities, our openness to God, is obstructed by the agendas and values of our own culture and society. Fasting is a means to remove us being so subject to ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’, and to break the hold over us of the power of ungodlike things. To help us recover the capacity to enjoy the world and our life in it as God’s creation, not ours.
So, how to fast? Well, first I think we have to admit that the traditional Christian fasts are excessive, and that upholding them formally will only serve to sustain their irrelevance in our lives. Second, we need to understand that fasting includes days of abstinence, as the Prayerbook states; that is, days when it is not the case of doing completely without food but abstaining in some way. Thirdly, if we are considering fasting as a discipline in our Christian lives for the first time, we don’t have to attempt an heroic standard from the off. So, I want to suggest to you some manageable revisions of the tradition of Christian fasting which I believe are manageable in our lives when most of our friends and associates, and even members of our family, are not Christian. After all, it is all very well practising fasting when, like me, you live on your own and have a very small social life. But most of us Christians live in families, and we engage in meals with many others who don’t share our faith.
What follows is what I would call the baseline of fasting for the modern Catholic Anglican Christian. There should be days of abstinence and these are every Friday of the year (the day of our Lord’s crucifixion) when no meat should be eaten - a return to fish on Fridays. It likely to me that most of us are not going to keep the entire six weeks of Lent as a rigorous fast like our Orthodox brothers and sisters. However, Lent does need to retain its reality as a time of fast, so I would suggest that we keep some form of abstinence throughout this holy season. Perhaps giving up one meal a day, or one type of food, throughout the entire season. This can be also a little witness to our non-believing or non-practising family and friends with whom we eat during Lent. A greater degree of fasting seriousness, in some way, should occur during Holy Week - perhaps abstaining from meat or alcohol until the Easter Day feast? If possible, the Great Fasts of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday should be observed.
Finally, Catholic custom has always stated that the fasting rules to not apply to the sick and the very aged. So, for most of our parishioners there is an out! It is a valuable reminder that fasting is not an end itself but is only part of our Christian lives so that we might, by God’s Spirit, ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ (Ps. 34.8).
February 2021.