Catholic Reading Wednesday

With many thanks to our awesome curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

Reflecting on her Saturday fast in response to Pope Francis' call to pray for peace in Syria, blogger Calah Alexander reflects on how her fast brought her peace with her husband and peace with herself.

On a day when everything seemed to be going wrong and everyone seemed to be making her angry, Alexander was tempted to cut herself some slack by not fasting, but keeping her fast enabled her to realize that "everyone will always be “the Other” to me, until I can accept that the neighbor God wants me to love as myself is the one whom I like the least. . . Sometimes, some horrible times, those people are the ones playing the Good Samaritan to my wounded Jew."

Fasting, along with prayer and almsgiving, has long been considered a pillar of Jewish and Christian spiritual life, but in modern times it's largely neglected and misunderstood. Perhaps this is because fasting, as this post demonstrates, is so rich and mysterious in its blessings that its benefits are hard to put into words. Scripture reveals the following motivations for fasting:

• We fast to show sorrow for our sins and for the sins of our community, as Moses did: "I fell prostrate before the Lord for forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water, because of all the sin you had committed, doing what was evil in the Lord’s sight and so arousing his anger" (Deut 9:18).
• We fast to demonstrate our sorrow over evils that have befallen us, as David fasted in the wake of Abner's death: ". . . They went to console David with food while it was still day. But David swore, 'May God do thus and so to me if I eat bread or anything else before sunset.'" (2 Sam 3:35).
• We fast to show our dependence on God, as Elijah did when he fasted and was nourished by the angel (1 Kings 19:3).
• We fast to strengthen ourselves to face temptation, as Esther did when she prepared to face the king on behalf of her people (Esther 4:16)
• And we fast in imitation of Christ, who united all of these reasons for fasting in Himself (Matt 4).

Fasting thus allows us to enter into the great paradox of Christianity: fasting comes from a place of sorrow and sadness, and it may seem to weaken us physically and open us up to spiritual temptation, but it is precisely in our emotional sadness, our physical weakness, and our spiritual humility that we are best able to call the strength of God to our aid, both for our sakes and the sake of the world. In fasting we confront our demons head on, but we also encounter the God who enables us to defeat them.

The blessings of fasting do not come quickly or cheaply. They can be difficult to see and easy to write off. But if we open ourselves up to them, we will find an enormous treasure.