EDITORIAL | KAIROS GLOBAL | MARCH 2024

Author: Dr. Chackochan J Njavallil

Now is the perfect time to reconnect with the significance of fasting and abstinence, especially as we have entered Lent. It's an opportunity for us to prepare ourselves thoroughly for Easter.

In Catholicism, fasting and abstinence are mandated by Canons 1250–1253 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. These canons establish Fridays throughout the year and the Lenten season as penitential times for the entire Church. Adults (16 and above) are required to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday until age 59. 

Though many Catholics prefer abstinence on all Fridays outside Lent, some episcopal conferences allow alternative penances. However, no conference has lifted the obligation for fasting or abstinence on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The precept to fast and abstain on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday typically remains unchanged. Adults are usually limited to one full meal on a fast day, with allowance for two small meals or snacks, known as collations. Church requirements on fasting apply to solid food, with no restrictions on beverages, including water. Church law on fasting has evolved over centuries and is subject to legitimate changes by Church authorities.

Basil of Caesarea gives the following exhortation regarding fasting:

Let us fast an acceptable and very pleasing fast to the Lord. True fast is the estrangement from evil, temperance of tongue, abstinence from anger, separation from desires, slander, falsehood and perjury. Privation of these is true fasting. 

St Augustine says that it is the highest religion to imitate what we worship, so that, when Our Lord fasted, we ought to imitate him in fasting. There are four reasons which ought to move us to fasting—firstly, the command of God; secondly, the example of Christ; thirdly, the manifold harm which befalls those who do not fast; fourthly, the manifold benefits which come to them from fasting. 

St Robert Bellarmine, on the advantage of fasting, writes:

The fruit and advantages of fasting can easily be proved. And first; fasting is most useful in preparing the soul for prayer, and the contemplation of divine things, as the angel Raphael said: “Prayer is good with fasting.” Thus Moses for forty days prepared his soul by fasting, before he presumed to speak with God: so Elias fasted forty days, that thus he might be able, as far as human nature would permit, to hold converse with God: so Daniel, by a fast of three weeks, was prepared for receiving the revelations of God: so the Church has appointed “fasts” on the vigil of great festivals.