Fasting

Only an insipid and ignorant form of Christianity that thinks of itself more and more as social morality can dismiss fasting as essentially irrelevant, and can make the mistake of thinking that any resolution to go without something 'extra' (and therefore not as vital as food and eating) can take the place of fasting. This is a docetic trend that makes the created reality of human beings only 'apparent,' and that forgets both the body’s significance and 'density' and the fact that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Fasting is actually the way a Christian confesses faith in the Lord with his or her entire body. It is an antidote to our tendency to reduce the spiritual life to its intellectual dimension, or to confuse the spiritual with the psychological. Certainly, as there is always the risk of our turning fasting into an ascetic performance or an accomplishment deserving of a reward, the Christian tradition reminds us that our fasting should be hidden and governed by humility, and that it should have a precise objective - justice, the sharing of what we have, and love for God and our neighbor (Isaiah 58:4-7; Matthew 6:1-18). This is the reason why the Christian tradition has conducted a carefully balanced and judicious reflection on the subject of fasting: "Fasting is useless and even dangerous for those who are not familiar with its peculiarities and conditions" (John Chrysostom); "It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one's brothers through slanderous words" (Abba Hyperechius); "If you fast regularly, do not be inflated with pride; if you think highly of yourself because of it, then you had better eat meat. It is better for a man to eat meat than to be inflated with pride and glorify himself" (Isidore the Elder).