Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the three traditional disciplines associated with Lent. Catholics often associate fasting with penance, but it is also a spiritual discipline: Jesus, “he who knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21), inaugurated his public ministry after fasting in the desert. So, although there is a rich theological foundation for fasting, let me instead draw attention to some insights from philosophical anthropology that might also enrich how we think of fasting this Lent.
The human person is a bodily-spiritual composite. He has one foot in the material world and one in the spiritual. Being aware of that is important for several reasons.
One is that it makes us aware of who we are. The Delphic maxim commanded us, “Know thyself!” That’s important, because it makes us walk in reality.
We live in a world and time in which, in many ways, we do not know ourselves. No small number of people are walking around believing they are in the “wrong” body, which suggests they somehow think there is an “I” that is disincarnate from and, in some sense, superior to “their” subordinate body. Not to appreciate the reality of our incarnation is very much a sign of our times.
Our embodiment is so important that the Son of God took human flesh. That’s what we celebrated at Christmas and whose rising in his human body we will celebrate at Easter. It’s said that one of the reasons for the devil’s rebellion was his revulsion at the idea that God should so identify with enfleshed human beings.
Now, because we are flesh and spirit, we also have desires in both worlds. But we come to know this world through our bodies and senses. That is why the physical has such a direct effect on us. It’s why two great human instincts—self-preservation and the sexual urge—are very bodily. We want to eat and drink, and we want to have sex.
The physical has a direct and immediate impact on us. Absent God’s special grace, the idea of contemplative prayer is not going to get our attention as directly as an aromatic piece of hot pizza.
But we are not just physical creatures. The physical and its pleasures are important, but in some sense, they are also blind. They can be disordered. God gives us pleasure to direct us to the good, but sometimes we turn pleasure from a means to an end, replacing the true good with pleasure.
That’s where fasting comes in. Food and drink are good things. In the blessing before meals, we ask God to bless the “gifts which we have received from your bounty.” The Psalmist thanks God for “wine to gladden [men’s] hearts . . . and bread to sustain the human heart” (104:15).
Through fasting, we freely forgo these good things. We acknowledge their goodness. We admit we like them. We know they are good.
But we also recognize that man’s sensual appetites—his pleasures, especially his bodily pleasures—should be subject to reason, and that means they need to be brought under our willpower. We also know how hard that is.
Ash Wednesday is a fast day. How long is it before most people suddenly cannot resist the thought of that piece of chocolate, that succulent sandwich, that cup of coffee, or that bread and butter? We know what we want to do, but, like St. Paul, “I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil I do not want” (Rom. 7:19). I want to sacrifice that meal, that piece of candy, that drink—but the will seems powerless.
Fasting, then, helps us to “know thyself,” by reckoning with two things: (1) the immediate and direct impact the sensual and physical has on me and (2) the fragmentation within me among appetites, reason, and will. Fasting helps me not only to “know” myself—a function of reason—but, with the grace of God, to rule myself—a function of will. By ordering appetite to reason and reason to will, I acquire the good of integrity, of integration within myself that makes me not a slave to my appetites, but rather a master of myself.
Food, after all, is a legitimate choice I can sometimes indulge. There are other physical appetites whose indulgence is much more morally problematic. Take sex. Clearly, sexual pleasure has a powerful impact on people. But sex outside marriage is sinful. So abstaining from sex outside marriage is not a sacrifice; it is a duty. The responsibility of chastity is every man’s.
Within marriage, however, there are times people also “fast” from sex. What makes natural family planning more than a “technique” is the spiritual motivation underlying its observance. By abstaining from intercourse, a couple recognizes (1) that sex is something good they need to respect as a good, even if it is also powerfully attractive physically to them, but (2) they can forgo that good “by mutual consent and for a time, that you may devote yourself to prayer” or another good purpose (1 Cor. 7:5). Here, where a couple forgoes a legitimate good for them, they also learn “self-control,” the subjection of their physical appetite to reason and will, integrating their persons.
Self-mastery is not anti-human. It is profoundly human, because it seeks to rebuild the unity of the bodily-physical being that is man and which sin has shattered. That self-mastery enables a person to choose and persist in the good. That requires effort, something in which one may sometimes fail, but, with perseverance and grace, can enable one to grow to the stature of the “glory of God which is man fully alive” (St. Irenaeus).
Lent invites us to make that effort, in which fasting is a vital tool.