People fast for many reasons.
On the secular front, intermittent fasting has become popular in health and fitness circles, for its efficacy in weight loss, and in mitigating diabetes and heart disease. A strapping young man at work once told me that, before summer, he did a weekly water fast for 16-24 hours to get his body “beach-wear ready” in the summer. I was both impressed and amused at his earnest and honest revelation.
Back in India, my childhood Muslim friend had started “Ramadan” fasting at 9 or 10 years of age, going through torrid Mumbai summer days (4:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.) without so much as a sip of water, or even swallowing her own saliva. Millions of our Muslim brethren across the world exhibit the same self-discipline and rigor every year!
Valuable Insights
Today’s readings offer us valuable insights into God’s desires for us when fasting. Fasting – voluntary abstinence from food or other pleasures for a set period of time – has always been part of the Christian pilgrim’s journey – helping us grow in the areas of self-discipline, self-conquest, humility, repentance, and poverty of spirit.
The Church has always used fasting to accompany times of repentance and atonement, to deepen worship and spiritual communion with God, to wean us away from worldliness, to receive revelation and clear direction for decision-making, and to wage spiritual warfare. Fasting, combined with prayer and almsgiving, are indispensable tools for spiritual victory, and as many have experienced, a faster way to move stubborn spiritual mountains.
Justice and Care
Two important points strike me about today’s readings. Isaiah 58 reminds us that fasting has to be accompanied by justice in our relationships and care for the oppressed, poor, hungry, naked and homeless. These are, unarguably, priority items for the Lord. Without these, we render our own fasting, prayer and sacrifice both worthless in God’s eyes, and useless in gaining merit for our souls; or reprieve in our struggles. How can God answer our prayers when we have been unjust to our neighbor?
Integrity of the heart and purity of motive towards our neighbor cannot be replaced by posturing, or by a multitude of prayers and pleas. There are many ways that we, like the Jews in Isaiah’s time, have abandoned God’s laws. We are right to seek mercy from God for our weakness, but we are wrong to withhold forgiveness from our enemies. We carefully hide our own faults but are quick to shame a brother and expose his weakness – nowadays, a virtual epidemic on social media. Let us hear the Lord’s voice cry out full-throated and unsparingly, “Tell My people their wickedness and the house of Jacob their sins.”
God sees through every layer of deceit in our hearts. And He is merciful.
Who was Right?
Now, on to the second point. So, who was right? John’s disciples or Jesus’s disciples?
The disciples of John were right in fasting – for they had received with open hearts the gospel of repentance and renewal preached by the prophet. But the disciples of Jesus were equally right in refraining from fasting. This was their time to bask in the very presence of Divine Love – Israel’s Maker who had said He would be her Husband, her Bridegroom – had come in the flesh. He was healing their broken hearts and binding up their wounds. Once healed, they would be restored, strengthened, raised up, and then sent out to conquer the whole world in His name.
Like Christ’s disciples, and as members of the church, we too are sojourners in that unique place between the joy of Christ’s resurrection, our current earthly suffering and persecution, and Jesus’ imminent return in glory to rule Heaven and Earth.
It is beautiful to be able to follow the Liturgical Seasons of the Church – as church militant, the seasons of penitence help us empty ourselves of our worldly desires, thus making room for God to work, and in jubilant seasons, we enjoy feasting on the abundance of His courts as we anticipate the eternal Heavenly Banquet that we will one day enjoy with one another.
Beautifully written!