Word to the Wise
Friday, February 19, 2021 - Friday after Ash Wed.
[Isa 58:1-9a and Matt 9:14-15]"Why do we fast and you do not see it? Afflict ourselves, and you take no note of it?" Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw......" This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting fee 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. [Isaiah] The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?" [Matthew]
Fasting does not have to be a religious activity, as any number of dietary programs can testify. The general goal is to have good health. Occasionally, fasting is used as a political statement when a political prisoner refuses to eat. In the Old Testament, the only mandatory day of fasting was on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:29ff). It was generally associated with grief and mourning. Old Testament fast meant no food or drink from sunrise to sunset, much like the Islamic Ramadan prescribes. Nevertheless, fasting occasionally took on public religious overtones, which Isaiah speaks about in today's first scripture. He denounces such observances as hypocrisy because those who were fasting were also committing grave injustices. In Jesus' time, the Pharisees and some other Jewish groups adopted fasting as a public religious expression. Jesus equally denounced such fasting (Matt. 6:16-18) because of the motives behind it, not because he thought fasting was bad. Nevertheless, his attitude on the subject offended the religious authorities. Very little is said about the subject in the New Testament.
The Catholic church recommends fasting as a religious observance because it is regarded as a penitential practice. But the fasting is meant to achieve a greater spiritual goal, a greater awareness of our unruly appetites and of the involuntary fasting of much of the world that lives in hunger every day. Those "rice bowls" we see in parish churches have that broader goal in mind. In most American dioceses, fasting is associated with Lent and with preparation to receive the Eucharist. It is generally required only of those between 18 and 60 years of age in Lent. [Abstinence means no meat and that is required on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays of Lent.]
Fasting, as a religious observance, needs those goals I mentioned = a greater awareness of our habits of consumption and of those who go without adequate nutrition for whatever reason, and they are millions in number.. To fast simply because it is required misses the goal and becomes empty. Isaiah and Jesus would be the first to remind us of this. AMEN