Fasting: For Christ and for the Poor

Unusually for our benighted times, the Confraternity of Christ the King asks that all of its members fast, at least on Fridays of each week. Even the comites, whose obligations are quite minimal, make the promise to keep this fast. Why does the CCR emphasize fasting so much? Is it a sensible rule?

Every Christian must fast; it cannot be stated less strongly than that. Fasting is an absolute obligation for a follower of Christ the King; the Scriptures, the Church Fathers, and the constant tradition of Christianity from the very earliest days make this clear.

The Lord, of course, fasted forty days in the desert before He began His ministry Mt 4. He instructed us not to fast like the hypocrites, but to fast privately, so that the Lord will see:

And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Amen I say to you, they have received their reward. Mt 6:16

He explained that His followers would certainly fast in the future, when He had gone up to His reward:

And they said to him: Why do the disciples of John fast often, and make prayers, and the disciples of the Pharisees in like manner; but thine eat and drink? To whom he said: Can you make the children of the bridegroom fast, whilst the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, then shall they fast in those days. Lc 5:33–35

Most importantly, Christ tells us that there are some things that only fasting can do, referring to a demon and saying that “[t]his kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” Mc 9:28

And in the Acts of the Apostles, fasting is taken as a given of Christian living; see, for example, Acts 13 and 27.

In the Didache, which is among the earliest non-Scriptural texts we possess and certainly dates from the first century, Christians are told:

[L]et not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second and fifth day of the week; but fast on the fourth day and the Preparation. Didache 8

That is, fasting on the fourth day and the Preparation day (Wednesday and Friday) of each week was given as a command to the Christians of the first century. Nor, in the patristic age, did Christian vigor for fasting diminish; St. Basil and St. Ambrose, for example, wrote entire treatises on fasting.

Indeed, Christian fasting continued to be a vital part of our spirituality until the 1960s, and among observant Catholics it remains such. For most of Christian history, fasting was a huge part of the year; Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays, every day during Lent (including Sundays), the Ember Days, and the vigils of great feasts. And fasting was a much more serious endeavor than our current, nearly nonexistent fasting rules are. Again, for most of history, the following were the rules:

1. No meat, often including anything derived from animals, such as milk, cheese, and eggs. Sometimes this included oil, as well.
2. Drink was permitted, even wine or beer, as long as the purpose was to slake thirst and not nourish the body.
3. One meal per day.
4. The single meal had to be taken in the evening, typically about “the ninth hour” (around 3 in the afternoon). No food could be taken before then.

That was it. Certain places and times had more stringent rules; for example, during Holy Week the “black fast” was a common devotion, permitting only bread, salt, water, and vegetables. In the Middle Ages it became common that manual laborers and the sick were permitted a “collation”, which was a small amount of bread or fruit, in the morning; typically this had to be four ounces or less.

For comparison, our current “fasting” rules aren't even really fasting; they don't truly represent anything different from what most people are doing anyway. We are permitted one “main meal” (whatever that means) and two smaller meals which together don't equal the main meal. How does that differ from a typical day's repast? With this modern rule, fasting essentially means only that we don't eat between meals; while this is an excellent small penance to undertake, it's certainly not fasting.

So the Confraternity encourages its members to follow the old rules, in as much rigor as they are able. Typically, at a minimum, it involves this:

1. A single meal, with no meat.
2. No food until the meal.
3. That meal should occur after noon.

And so it is clear that fasting is clearly a necessary part of Christian spirituality. But why do we fast?

St. Thomas Aquinas, in Q. 147, addresses fasting in his typically lucid way, and notes that there are three primary reasons for fasting. First, it disciplines the concupiscence of the flesh; second, the mind, once freed of an obsession with earthly things, may more easily rise to divine things; and third, it is a penance to make satisfaction for sins. To this, in the context of Christ the King, we can add one more: freeing up resources for almsgiving. There is substantial overlap between these purposes, so we won't go through them one at a time; rather, we will explain how important they are together, in the context of Christ the King.

Fasting directly mirrors the role of Christ the King in our own lives and societies. We have seen (as the Catechism of Christ the King observes in Question 81) that the reign of Christ the King in the world is like the soul ruling the body. In fasting, we mimic that role of Christ in society by exerting the rule of our souls over our bodies.

Fasting is the deliberate deprivation the body's most primal and fundamental need. When we deprive our bodies of this most basic sustenance, even for a short time, we are expressing the absolute rule of our soul (which houses our wills) over our bodies, and thus the primacy of the spiritual over the material. This is not only an excellent means of disciplining our passions; it is a superlative way to give witness to Christ's Kingship in the world.

Furthermore, by putting our bodies into subjection to our souls by fasting, we are disciplining ourselves for hardship, the hardship of battle and of suffering. Consider the Psalms:

Blessed be the Lord my God, who teacheth my hands to fight, and my fingers to war. Ps 143

And consider St. Paul's testimony:

But I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway. 1Cor 9:27

Some few of us may yet be called to fight for Christendom; all of us are called to take up our crosses and follow Him. Either way, fasting is an essential part of preparing ourselves for it. A constant comparison arising out of the frequent martyrdoms of the early Church was that fasting for the Christian is like exercise for the athlete, or training for the soldier. The athlete doesn't go to the field unprepared, without ever lifting any weights or practicing his sport; the soldier doesn't go to battle without training in shooting, running long distances, assembling his weapon. So should the Christian never go to the battle without his own training: prayer and fasting. Inflicting this suffering on ourselves prepares us for suffering inflicted on us by others.

But fasting is also useful for one other purpose, besides imitating Christ, subduing our bodies, and preparing us for martyrdom; it also frees up resources for almsgiving.

The early Christians always held that fasting was intimately connected with mercy; it allowed the penitent to use the resources he might otherwise have expended—be it food itself, or the money he would have used to buy it—for other things. There are many purposes to which these resources might be put, but most often it is for almsgiving. The Fathers repeatedly emphasized the close relationship between fasting and almsgiving. St. John Chrysostom, for example, in his great treatise of that name, beseeched Christians to “not, then, render the fast futile, because fasting does not ascend to heaven by itself but only if it has almsgiving as its sister and companion.” PG 48:1059

In the Shepherd of Hermas, an ancient Christian text, the Christian is directed in this way:

Having fulfilled what is written, in the day on which you fast you will taste nothing but bread and water; and having reckoned up the price of the dishes of that day which you intended to have eaten, you will give it to a widow, or an orphan, or to some person in want.” Shepherd of Hermas, Book III

St. Augustine, ever brilliant, in his Sermon 207 tells Christians: “Let us give alms the more generously and the more frequently in proportion as the day draws nearer on which the supreme almsgiving accomplished for us is celebrated. Fasting without mercy is worthless to him who fasts.”

So while fasting is valuable for all the reasons St. Thomas gave us, let us also remember that it gives us one more resource that we can use to help the poor—and thereby do great service to Christ.

And so, Christian, fast; allow the Lord to teach your hands to fight, and your fingers to war. Act now! Age viriliter; noli morare!

Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!