Why Catholics Practice Fasting and Abstinence?

The following comes from the Integrated Catholic Life:

Would you like to know the secret to a better, deeper, more joyful life in Christ?

Of course you would.  We all would.

Our bookstores are filled with books written to help us advance in prayer and the spiritual life. The “secret” we all look for is really no secret at all.  At its heart, the gospel message is one of self-denial and detachment from all things that are obstacles to our growth.  Jesus tells us that if we are to be his disciples, we must deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him (cf. Matthew 16:24). That is why Catholics practice fast and abstinence as a form of self-denial intended to lead us to perfection. So stick with me here and learn how self-denial will satisfy your deepest hunger.

The Catholic Disciplinary Laws of Fast and Abstinence

In these modern times, we don’t seem to hear much about fasting and abstinence anymore.  That’s a shame because the doctrine of self-denial is crucial to our becoming fully satisfied. Many of today’s Catholics associate fasting and abstinence only with the season of Lent and that’s a shame too. Let’s review the Church’s disciplinary law regarding Fasting and Abstinence:

• Fasting During Lent – The Church requires its members to fast on two days each year — Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The Bishops in the United States have defined the minimum requirement of the fast for U.S. Catholics to be one full (but not excessive) meal plus other food not to exceed the full meal which may be taken in part at breakfast, noon or evening, depending on when one decides to take the “one full meal”. This law applies to Catholics between the age of 18 and 59.
• Abstinence From Meat on Fridays — The Church requires its members to abstain from eating meat on Fridays as an act of penitence.  In the United States, Catholics are permitted to substitute another form of penance on Fridays outside the season of Lent. This law applies to all Catholics who are over the age of 14.
• The Holy Communion Fast — Catholics must also fast for a minimum of one hour before receiving Holy Communion.

The entire season of Lent is a penitential time and our attitude and behavior during this season should be marked by some sort of self-denial.  The season of Advent is also a penitential season, but of less severity, and we should also mark this season with some form of self-denial, even if it is less than that practiced during Lent.

That’s it!  And so many of us complain and wait for the clock to tick down to midnight so we can have a ham sandwich. We need to turn our thinking around because uncontrolled appetites only become hungrier and more insatiable. That is why there is a myriad of “miracle” diets and weight loss programs on the market that promise results without effort. Well, there is only one source of miracles and that is God.  He has already provided us the ultimate diet program if we will but listen to him.

Although we often only hear about fast and abstinence associated with Lent, it is really a practice that is important all through the year.

So Let’s Broaden Our Understanding

As you can see, “to fast” generally means to significantly reduce the consumption of food or to forego it altogether for short durations. Abstinence is generally seen as avoiding the eating of meat.  But both acts are forms of self-denial.  More broadly speaking, self-denial is the act of giving up something that is good, be it food or some other “good” for the purpose of deepening our spiritual life and making acts of reparation for our sin or the sin of others. There is a long-history of the Catholic practice of fast and abstinence dating all the way back to the time of Christ. Our culture often incorporates these practices into our everyday language.  For example, the word breakfast is formed from two words, “break” and “fast” meaning simply that the first meal of the day breaks the fast from our last meal of the previous day. Another example, although this has nothing to do with fasting, is our word for the celebration of Christ’s birth which is formed by two words, “Christ’s” and “Mass” or Christmas.

Read the rest here.

Casting Out Devils From Your Life

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Jesus said with the utmost clarity: “Some devils can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.”(Mt. 17:21) Often the devil or devils have a real stronghold in our lives, and to make things worse, we are not even aware of it. One of the greatest victories of the devil is to hide or camouflage himself, or better yet, trick us into believing that he does not even exist!

Saint Ignatius of Loyola, in his rules for discernment (Rule 13, first week of Rules for discernment) states that devil likes to work in secrecy and strives to get us to keep our interior lives secret to everybody. This secrecy even includes hiding our state of soul to our Confessor or Spiritual Director.

The same saint emphasizes the fact that when we are going through tough times of desolation a tactic of the devil is that  he convinces us to keep it under lock and key, keep it to ourselves—top secret! As such the devil will magnify and accentuate our problem transforming it from a mole-hill into a mountain. A small cut can get infected, and eventually turn gangrenous and even lead to an amputation. Spiritual maladies have to be brought to the Spiritual doctor— that is to say, a good Confessor or Spiritual Director.

An essential tool to be used frequently, prudently, and with proper spiritual direction is the tool of penance; and fasting is one of the primary applications of the penitential life.

On one occasion while I was taking a walk, a big black bird was in my path. As I drew closer, I expected the big bird to take flight, but he did not. At first, it occurred to me that maybe I was a modern Saint Francis, but that was not the case at all. The bird was land-bound for the simple reason that he had either wounded or even broken one of his wings!

A spiritual reflection flashed across my mind and it was this:  we can be compared to that black bird!  The bird is created to fly high into the deep blue sky! Likewise the human person, created in the image and likeness of God and baptized into the family of God, is called to fly high in the spiritual life, and eventually reach heaven.

However, for the human person to soar high into the mystical heights he needs two strong wings, to loft him on high: 1) Fervent prayer, and 2) constant penance. The Spiritual writers call these two dimensions of the spiritual life the Ascetical life which leads to the Mystical life!

This being said, we would like to outline some of the basic reasons why the human person should pray fervently all the days of his life, but at the same time cultivate a penitential life marked by the practice of fasting. Unless we have strong and sufficient reasons to motivate us we will never really undertake the practice seriously.

Here we go with the reasons to learn to fast:

1. Imitation of Christ.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Indeed He is our model!  Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the desert, giving us an example to follow. (Mt. 4:1-11) Few if any of us can fast forty days and forty nights—the duration of the Lenten Season! But we all can do at least a little. The Saintly Cure of Ars said that fasting is hard just at the start and then it becomes a habit.

2. Personal Reparation.  We are all born as sinners with Original Sin. Then during the course of our lives we commit actual sins. In justice we are obliged to repair for the sins we have committed in justice towards God. An old Midas muffler commercial put it succinctly: “Pay now or pay later.”Better for us to pay now than to do so later in Purgatory. Fasting indeed can be a powerful means to shorten our stay in Purgatory!

3. Family Reparation. We all know of family members, either in our blood family or family circles, of members who have simply walked away from God, no longer believe in God, are indifferent to God or even at times violently opposed to all that refers to God. These individuals who were redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus are in desperate need of prayer and fasting. Our Lady of Fatima warned us seriously: “Many souls are lost because nobody prays and offers up sacrifices for them.” Who knows, maybe our acts of penance could save immortal souls for all eternity!

4. Social Reparation. On the level of our nation we must apply ourselves to serious prayer and reparation and fasting due to the many moral evils that are afflicting our country—especially the scourge and plague of abortion. About every 20 seconds a baby is aborted, three a minute, and 4,000 a day in USA. Since Roe vs. Wade, Jan 22^nd, 1973, approximately 45 million surgical abortions have been perpetrated. Due to the fact that this river of innocent blood of innocent babies has been shed, we all must feel it incumbent upon ourselves to carry out fervent prayers and fasting. Actually the Bishops of the United States have proclaimed January 22^nd as a National day of prayer and penance (fasting) to repair for the sins of abortion as well as to prevent future abortions. Let us all do our part with generosity!

5. Cast Out Devils.   As we said earlier in the essay Jesus said that some devils can be cast out only by prayer and fasting. Saint Pope John Paul II mentioned in one of his discourses that sin can even be institutionalized—that is to say embedded or deeply engrained in the fabric of society. How true even more so today. Abortion institutionalized since 1973, the legalization of Same-sex unions that have the same legal status as Traditional marriages, States legalizing Euthanasia—the killing of the elderly and infirm, widespread legalization of embryonic research resulting in killing of the little/tiny babies in laboratories, the deep encrustation of the pornographic culture destroying the minds and hearts and families at large. This institutionalization of sin can only be cast out and conquered by the strongest spiritual medicine—fervent prayer to Almighty God and rigorous and constant penance. One of the most convincing examples of prayer and fasting was the person of the Cure of Ars, Saint John Marie Vianney. He fasted many days by eating nothing, or eating once a day on two or three potatoes, and then sleeping only three hours a night. His fervent prayer was: “ Lord send me any suffering but save the souls of my parishioners.”

Let us pray that we would be imbued with the spirit of the saints and undertake in our lives fervent prayer but also fasting. Let us fast in this life so as to feast forever with God in heaven for all eternity!

The Fruit of Faithful Prayer of Two Mothers

The following comes from In God's Company 2:

In June of 2012, our pilgrimage group visited the “castle” in Medjugorje to hear the testimony of Patrick Latta. Patrick began his testimony by introducing himself as a businessman from Canada. He began, “I quit going to school when I was 16 to go wash cars in a car lot….10 years later I bought the company. I was a super salesman. I bought my own Honda dealership. I bought my own BMW dealership. We were the top gun in Western Canada. Nobody could outsell us.”

   Patrick’s wife, Nancy, popped in as he was speaking. “This is my wife, Nancy –  this is my treasure."  Nancy says the story he is telling is not their story, but the fruit of 48 years of prayer by Patrick’s mother – an orphan raised by sisters of St. Joseph – and the faithful prayer and perseverance of her own mother, who was praying for her for 30 years. “The story you are about to hear is a story of God's mercy and grace. We have never seen Our Lady. We have had no mystical experiences. We have no special gifts. This story is a result of the faithful prayer of two mothers.”

   Patrick continued his story. “I had nothing to do with God, church, marriage, sacraments, school. I had a horrible time in Catholic school." One day, when Patrick was on the football field, the head coach yelled in front of everyone, “Hey, Latta, you can't play because you don't pay to come here." Patrick did not know he did not pay. "That was the end of my school – that was the end in believing in God."

    "I have four children [from two previous marriages]. My children never saw the inside of the church – ever."  He used to say to his children, "This is god," and would hold up money. “When you have enough of this, you have all the god you want." Patrick lamented, “That's a father speaking to his children.” He said that one day his youngest son came home from school and announced he had been baptized Anglican. Patrick said to his son, “You're supposed to be Catholic." "Dad, you never took me inside a church." Patrick again lamented, “Wasn't I a great father? And that's how I lived – no God, no prayer, no church. But my business was fantastic, so I have a huge successful business and I don't need God. It was I, I, I …”

   After his second divorce, Patrick met Nancy. Within two months they were living together. “No God, no prayer, no church, no marriage, no sacrament – nothing – living in mortal sin. We lived together six years.”  One day, Nancy said that they should get married. Patrick agreed, and they got married the next day in a helicopter on top of a mountain. He hired a JP and asked the pilot to be the best man. He didn't even know his name. When he came home from work the next day, Nancy was crying. She said, "I don't feel married." She wanted to get married in a church. Patrick said, “Nancy, do you know how much that helicopter cost?" She said, “I don't care about your helicopter. We have to get married in a church." Patrick reminded her that he had two previous divorces.

   Nancy went to see the bishop, who had documentation on Patrick's annulment from his first marriage. Patrick did not even know the marriage was annulled! The second document said that Patrick’s second marriage was never valid. The next day Nancy went to a church called “Immaculate Heart of Mary” to ask the priest to marry them. The priest agreed, but said to Nancy, “You’re out of your mind to marry this guy in church. He'll never change. He's the worst case I've ever seen. You are not going to make a success of this marriage –  there's no chance." Patrick agreed to attend marriage preparation classes and he made many promises – go to Mass, Confession, etc. – but admits he is a “professional promiser” since he is a car dealer. They did get married in the church, but Patrick said it didn't mean anything, and he broke every promise he made. That's how they lived… until one day when Nancy's brother sent them a book of messages of Our Lady of Medjugorje.

   When they received the book, Patrick was not interested, so he handed the book to Nancy, but she gave it back to him and said, "Here, my pagan husband, you throw them away and it's on your conscience." The word “conscience” wouldn't let Patrick throw the book away. He opened it and looked for the shortest message in the book. It said, “I call you to conversion for the last time." Then something happened. The tears just started and they wouldn't stop. He asked Nancy, "Why didn't you tell me about these messages? Why didn't you tell me they were true?"  Patrick confessed, “I saw myself for the first time – I'm Catholic and lived in mortal sin for 30 years. And it came back to me in one second – boom! In one minute everything changed in my life.”  He warned, “The day you see yourself as you live on this earth and you are Catholic and you are living in mortal sin – it's the worst day of your life, because reality hits you so hard and it's the truth."  

   Patrick began to read the messages – they became his whole life. He and Nancy even traveled to Oregon to attend a conference about the messages. Patrick was very touched when a priest at the conference suggested that everyone consecrate their children to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

   At this point in the talk, Patrick decided to do some audience participation. There was a group of high school boys there from Boston, so he chose three of them to role-play as his sons. He said to the first boy that the school called and said he was expelled for using drugs and possibly dealing drugs. Patrick said – as he held up some money – that the principal had told him that this was the problem. “Your kids have too much." Patrick said that his son, who had dreadlocks at the time, replied, “This is my life. Leave me alone." Then Patrick called over the boy who was to play another of his sons, and said this kid was a super rugby player, but had a drinking problem. He mentioned the time that this son could not find his yellow Barracuda in a parking lot because he was so drunk.

   Then Patrick called over a young woman from our group to play his 17 year-old daughter who wanted to get married. When she was divorced at age 19, Patrick gave her his car and his credit card and told her to go to California and find someone else. That's exactly what she did, and two years later she was divorced again.

   “Drugs, alcohol, divorce – a fourth kid I can't even talk about. His immorality is so off-the-wall. Why that lifestyle?” His son told him, “Because I never had a father.” Patrick looked at the young people who were playing his kids. “These are my four children that I never baptized. I never said a prayer with you from the day you were born. I never took you inside a church… You had everything money could buy. Your cars were $70,000.”

   Referring to the priest at the conference, Patrick said, “And the priest said to consecrate these kids to the Mother of God. Well, they’re the most helpless situation you could have with four children. These words ‘consecrate them to the Mother of God’ hit me so hard.” Patrick didn't know how to do the consecration. So he looked at the statue of Our Lady at the conference and said, "Blessed Mother, take my kids, and, Blessed Mother, You be the parent that I never was, because I'm a total failure.” 

  Patrick and Nancy spent two days at this conference and learned all about the messages. He said the number one message of Our Lady is to pray the Rosary, because when you do, you’ll see miracles in your family. The second message of Our Lady is to go to Mass – minimum of Sunday. Patrick started to say the Rosary and go to Mass.

   The third message Patrick said is the most difficult. Our Lady said She wants us to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Patrick looked up all the messages on fasting, and found that Our lady said, "When you pray and fast you can stop wars."  Patrick thought, “What war am I going to stop?”  Then the light went on – “I got a war on drugs, I got a war on alcohol, I got a war with divorces, I got a war on immorality you can't even talk about. My house is a war zone!”  He repeated, “Fasting stops wars." So they learned to fast every Wednesday and Friday. “When you fast you have no fear of the future.” Patrick admitted he had a hard time fasting. “It's the hardest message because we think fasting is for somebody else, but if you don't listen to the coach he can’t help you.”

   The next message is reading the Bible. They didn't even own a Bible, so Nancy had to buy one. Patrick said the fifth message is the big message of Medjugorje. “You can't start conversion without Confession.” Patrick had not been to Confession for 30 years and had lots to confess." You know what the priest did? He said, ‘I absolve you.’ I broke into tears. ‘I absolve you.’ Who can say that? Nobody has that power – only a priest. I'm shocked at the mercy of God and I'm shocked at the power the priest has in Confession. 30 years of mortal sin went down the drain in one Confession!”

   Speaking about the “castle” Patrick and Nancy built, Patrick said, “This is why this is a house of prayer for priests –  because the priest in Confession saved my life. Everything changed with that Confession.”  They have 300-400 priests a year come there, and also look after the religious, sisters, and seminarians and young men looking for vocations.

    Patrick went back to talking about his kids. He asked the youngest son if he’d like to pray a Rosary with them and he declined for months before he finally agreed. Today, 19 years later, that son is a Catholic, married, with two beautiful kids. He is a teacher at a Catholic high school, and one year he even took 52 kids from his school to Medjugorje.

   The second son went to Medjugorje once, and Patrick gave him a rosary. He went back to Canada and later called Patrick to tell him he quit drinking, quit rugby, and became a fireman.  Patrick said, “How is that possible?” And the son said, "The rosary you gave me in Medjugorje." Today he is married and has two beautiful kids. Patrick paraphrased, “Our Lady said if you do this (holding up the rosary), I'll show you miracles in your family.”

   For 10 years, Patrick did not hear from his daughter. In February of 2012, he got a phone call from her. She said she was in Canada and wanted to come to Medjugorje."Daddy, I want to start again. Daddy, I don't want to be separated from the family anymore."  At this point, she had been through three divorces.  She came for two weeks to Medjugorje. She got a healing of her problem with alcohol and went back to the University for a nursing degree. Her life completely changed. “The divorce is gone – the alcohol is gone – the drugs are gone – from someone who started to pray.”  Patrick asked for prayers for his oldest son who still lives an immoral lifestyle. Our Lady said that when you consecrate your kids to the Immaculate Heart, they will be saved. For 48 years, as Patrick's mother prayed, she saw nothing; but then he went home to Canada one time, and took his mother to Mass. She cried, "The black sheep is home; the prodigal son has come home!" 

   This year Patrick and Nancy will celebrate their 25th anniversary. Patrick held up his rosary as he recalled how the priest said their marriage would not work. Patrick sold his car dealerships, boat, house, cars, and everything to move to Medjugorje without even knowing where it was. Why? He quipped, “The Mother of God lives here and I want to be Her neighbor.” Patrick said that Our lady appeared 17 times on their property, since Marija lives next door. During an apparition, Marija consecrated their property to Our Lady and Her Son. Our Lady smiled and said, "I'm joyful that you consecrated this place to me. Those who come here I will bless and protect." Patrick beams, “A real message from the Mother of God to a guy who did everything wrong – 30 years of mortal sin. Can you imagine the mercy of God?”  Holding up a rosary, he concluded, “This is the answer to every problem. This is the answer to your marriage. This is the answer to your kids."

Fasting as Spiritual Weapon

 This is a great post on Fasting from The Catholic Gentleman:

Fasting gives birth to prophets and strengthens the powerful; fasting makes lawgivers wise. Fasting is a good safeguard for the soul, a steadfast companion for the body, a weapon for the valiant, and a gymnasium for athletes. Fasting repels temptations, anoints unto piety; it is the comrade of watchfulness and the artificer of chastity. In war it fights bravely, in peace it teaches stillness. – St. Basil the Great

Are you struggling with a sin? I mean a sin that you just can’t seem to get rid of; a sin that is keeps you in a constant state of guilt and despair. You’ve prayed, you’ve frequented the sacraments, but you just can’t seem to break its hold.

We’ve all been there at one point or another, and such struggles are part and parcel of the spiritual life. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Today, I want to introduce you to a very powerful, but much neglected weapon in the spiritual arsenal: Fasting.

If you want to put to energize your spiritual life, if you want to slay a sin that has you in bondage,  if you want to grow in union with God, take up the holy weapon of fasting. For as Jesus said, there are some demons that “cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”

Let’s examine this powerful weapon and its use in the spiritual life.

Read the rest here.

What's Fasting Got to Do with It?

The following is an article that I found at Spirit Daily on fasting. I think as we begin our Lenten season it is important to look again at this ancient tradition. The article below was written by Fr. Dwight Longenecker and it really powerful. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

I posted a video on my blog the other day from YouTube. It was an interview with a Romanian hermit. This grizzled old warrior was asked the most important element in a successful prayer life. He looked away with watery eyes then looked at the interviewer and replied, "Purity of the body."

He understood that what we do with our bodies affects our souls and minds and what we do with our souls and minds affects our bodies. Every spiritual tradition teaches the same truth: you must have mastery over your body if you wish to have mastery over your soul.

We take it for granted that the hard work of physical self discipline is necessary for many other human endeavors. The dancer, the athlete, the actor, the musician, the politician, the businessman. All agree that for real success they must be in control of their physical appetites.

It's the same with spiritual warfare. We have to control our appetite for food, our appetite for sex, our appetite for money, our appetite for sleep, our appetite for every physical comfort. We don't practice asceticism like members of Eastern religions because we think the physical world is sinful or bad in itself, but we do so as a method of self discipline. We control the body so that the soul may open up in silence. We make ourselves hungry for food so that we might hunger and thirst for righteousness.

The devil understands that what we do with our bodies affects our souls. That is why he tempts us with physical temptations so successfully. He sees very clearly what we tend to forget: that we are not souls encased in bodies like a water in a jug. Our souls and bodies are intermingled at every level, like water in a sponge.

The devil tempts us to physical excess, and if he can get us addicted, he has our souls. The reverse is also true. If we control our physical appetites, we can deprive him of that victory and gain control not only over our bodies and our appetites, but also over him. This is what Jesus meant when he spoke about the demons, “These can only come out by prayer and fasting.”

There’s more to it: not only do we gain control over the devil in our own lives by fasting, but fasting seems to release some sort of spiritual power in the world. Through fasting we become more spiritually alert and aware and God is able to use us more effectively. Fasting makes us a lean, mean fighting machine.

So resolve to fast more. Try giving up a meal once a week to start with. Fast on bread and water if you must eat. Then start to keep Fridays as a fast day. Not just the ‘fish on Friday’ thing, but really fasting for a whole day.

You’ll be amazed how it transforms your life. You’ll be back in control. If you can control your food intake you’ll soon have better control of the other appetites in your life that are running away with your soul.

And when you’ve done that, you're on the way to cooperating with God for the salvation of souls and victory over evil in ways you could never have imagined.

THE DESERT VS. DESIRE

The following is an article that I found at Spirit Daily by Father Dwight Longenecker. I thought it was very timely and worth reading:

Human beings suffer from two huge illusions. First, that life is supposed to be comfortable and second, that someone will make it comfortable for them. We suffer from this illusion because our expectations are determined by our first experiences. If a kid goes to school, and on the first day the class bully picks on him, he loses his lunch, the teacher gives him tough homework and he misses the bus home he's going to expect school to be a bad place to be. His expectations are determined by his first experience.

Our first experience is in the womb. It's safe. It's warm. There are three square meals a day. Then most of us have nine more months of care, warmth, sweet food, comfort and security. After that we usually have even more time in childhood when someone looks after us, feeds us, keeps us warm and safe. Our expectations are determined by our first experiences. So we enter into adult life thinking that life is about finding or maintaining or defending a comfort zone. This is our basic desire. We want to be safe. We want to be warm. We want to have pleasure. We want to have a full tummy. We want to escape from hardship. We want to escape from work. We want to get back to the womb, and we think life is about comfort zones. This is our desire.

But it is an illusion. A huge illusion. That is not what life is for at all. Life is for growth and achievement and most of all soul making. That is why the desert of Lent is important. The desert corrects our desire. When we willingly go out into the desert of Lent and take some hardship and pray more and give more we are willingly correcting the huge two illusions--that life is about being comfortable and that someone else is going to make us comfortable. In Lent, but God's grace, we take responsibility for ourselves. We accept that life (and also our religion) is not about comfort zones, but war zones.

This is why we fast during Lent: to correct the comfort instinct. Instead we embrace hardship. We do this not because we just need to lose weight or break a bad habit or because there is any virtue in suffering, but because we need to correct the comfort instinct. This is why we give alms--not just because the poor need money, but because we need to give. We need to break the instinct for a secure comfort zone and give up some of the money that we would use to buy that security. This is why we pray more--to break the self dependency and acknowledge our need for God.

So this Lent, let's go out with the Lord to the Desert and pray for the natural desire for comfort be replaced with a sober and realistic expectation that this life is not just to feel good, but to become good.