The Nature of the Church's fasts

It is Lent and high time that we had a word about fasting. I would imagine that many of our readers are keeping the traditional Lenten discipline: partial abstinence from meat and fast Monday through Thursday (and Saturday), Friday fast and complete abstinence from meat; "fast" here means one regular meal during the day, with meat allowed, and two collations without meat. The collations combined should amount to no more than one regular meal. Sundays during Lent, as with every other Sunday of the year, is a feast and so no fasting (which is why we start Lent on Ash Wednesday and not the Monday after the first Sunday). I have also seen the collations described as being of six ounces and eight ounces, which is a helpful guideline.

(These guidelines were last changed, so far as I know, by that great modernizing, liberal pontiff, Leo XIII, who allowed meat to be had at the one regular meal of the day.)

As I said, I would imagine that many of our readers are keeping this fast and I as quickly imagine that many of our readers are horrified or scandalized or awed or stunned that a real, live human being could or would fast in this way through the whole of Lent. Indeed, I shared this reaction when I was first introduced to the practice. And I don't deny that it can be hard, particularly if one denies oneself a collation or has one's full meal early in the day.

But I would like to propose another way of viewing this practice, a perspective which I hope will encourage others to think of taking it up, to realize that it's quite doable, and that it is a fine way, indeed, the traditional way to observe Lent.

Let me begin by considering the normal Friday abstinence from meat. As we all know, Catholics are obliged to abstain from meat on Fridays, though certain bishops' conferences allow other penitential acts to be substituted. Some members of this fair Society have had occasion to dine with a group of professional, working Catholics (and their priest) in the Syracuse area. On both occasions, which were Friday nights, every single one of them (including the priest) dived eagerly into a plate of meat. We found this behavior puzzling, but since they had doubtless scourged themselves to blood earlier in the day, we made no fuss about it.

But when one asks these Catholics, "Why do you eat meat on Fridays, contrary to the traditional practice of the Church?" we've heard answers like the following:

"Fish is my favorite food. So to eat it on Fridays is no penance for me."

"I prefer hidden penances, not those that can be seen by other people."

"What's the penance in eating a lobster on Fridays?"

First of all, no one claimed that abstaining from meat on Fridays would instantly vault one into the front ranks of the great spiritual athletes of all time. The Church does not ask these sorts of things of her children. Rather, she gives them tasks easy to fulfill or requires of them those things which are absolutely necessary to keep alive the life of grace. We need only commune once a year; we need only hear Mass once per week. We need penance as well, and the Church assigns it to Fridays, the day Our Lord suffered His Agony. So the Church is telling us that at least once a week, we ought to perform a penitential act. And this brings us to the lobster or shrimp dinners enjoined by the Church.

The first mistake with "Fish Fridays" is to think that the Church requires her children to eat fish on Fridays! She certainly does not; she only requires them not to eat flesh meat. But some people are under the impression that the penance assigned to Friday is the eating of fish, and naturally, if fish is something one enjoys, it all seems to be in vain. If you like fish or if you don't, it does not matter: the penance is to abstain for flesh meat.

What about the ideal of hidden penances? A few days ago, Joe Six Pack shared part of a sermon from St. Francis de Sales which recommended to Catholics that they not hide those practices enjoined upon them by the Church. The idea was that if they should do something more, whether in fasting or prayer or almsdeeds, this should be hidden, as the Gospel says, but when we are doing what the Church commands, we need not bury it. It is good for others to see that we, as Catholics, are living according to the laws of the Church.

What non-Catholic will be scandalized at the flaunting of our holiness when they see us insist upon the shrimp instead of prime rib dinner on Fridays? None of the things which the Church requires us to do would throw into the face of non-believers a pretentious holiness in the adherent. Instead, there is something else to be seen in these acts, something which St. Francis de Sales was eager that others see, namely an humble obedience.

It is the virtue of obedience, specifically, an act of the will, which lies at the heart of the Friday penance and the Lenten fast. Neither the Friday penance nor the Lenten fast ask very much of us physiologically: at most, the Lenten fast asks us to eat 2/3 the normal amount of food. But we're allowed as much as we would like to drink, including milk and juices. The simple point here is that the Church is not asking us to go on a diet when we fast at certain times; rather, it is by an interior motion of obedience, of humility in letting another decide for us just what and how we will eat on a certain day.

This idea can be illustrated in another way. As far as the primary virtue in these disciplines is concerned, the Church might just as well have asked us to eat pork chops and ice cream only during the whole of Lent. On those days that we would want strawberry shortcake instead of ice cream, yet lo, because of the precept, we would have to stick with ice cream. And when we wanted to eat some succulent shrimp, nevertheless, we would have to revert to the pork chops.

Of course, in requiring abstinence from certain foods or from our normal quantity of food, the Church also teaches us the need for bodily mortification and encourages us to practise it. The Church brings us so far, helping us to do the bare minimum, and then indicates the way we might advance yet farther. For example, in the past, it was a common practice to do a fast of some kind on all Saturdays of the year in honor of the Blessed Virgin. These fasts were not enjoined by the Church, but are a reasonable extension of the things she has taught us in Lent and about the honor due to the Blessed Mother.

In sum, Lent is not the Church's diet season. There are more than enough ways, even while observing the old fasting requirements, to get calories aplenty. Rather, during Lent, we mark the whole season by eating in a different way, by eating less in most cases, but more importantly, by making our will continue the fast, by regularly turning ourselves, even in very small and often hidden things, in a direction which we would not go on our own.


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