Fasting and abstinence are ancient practices integral to a multitude of religions. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Jainism all practice some form of fasting and abstinence. Athletes and actors are commonly fasting or abstaining. As a spiritual practice, fasting and abstinence are like setting an alarm clock. They are intended to wake us up, to encourage us to live deliberate—let alone more considerate—lives, and to increase not guilt but our desire to do good, our commitment to apprentice ourselves to Jesus, and our sense of appreciation for the blessings of this life.
The time-specific removal of something from our daily lives that is detrimental to ourselves or others gives us the ability to see it for what it is and the sense that with God’s help we can live better without it. The temporary abstinence of something good or enjoyable from our everyday lives increases our appreciation for it when or if we later reengage in it. The movie image of a character wandering for days aimlessly through the desert under the scorching sun and discovering water comes to mind. Water never tasted so good. Water keeps us alive. Another way to say this is that the Lenten fast accentuates the Easter Feast. If we don’t make that connection, we’re missing a big piece of Lenten spirituality which is two-fold—penitential and baptismal. Remember, the season of Lent was and remains a season of preparation for baptism. So, it’s not all sackcloth and ashes. It is also a season of hope and renewal. It’s the runway to new life.
At the heart of the spiritual practices associated with Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—is the practice of attentiveness, mindfulness, and paying attention so that we might live more intentional, deliberate, faithful, and loving lives. Sleepwalking through life is a venial sin and we pay dearly for it. Simone Weil insists that “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” So this is a time set aside specifically each year to make us conscious and acutely aware of how we live, why we do the things we do, what we are overly or unhealthily attached to, what thoughts, words, or actions need to be excised from our daily lives and what thoughts, words, and actions might be transplanted there instead? It is a time to reflect on what diminishes or enlarges our lives in healthy and edifying ways.
These chosen disciplines are meant to make us conscious of others, for example, mindfully connecting our fasting or abstaining from food and drink to those who are undernourished—the USDA claims that in our country alone 11 million children live in “food insecure” homes. In a land of plenty, that is shameful. The rhythm and logic of the Lenten practices—prayer, fasting, and generosity to the poor—is that they mutually inform and encourage each other in an integral spirituality that gives glory to the One from whom all blessings flow.
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