There are three practices that characterize Lent.  This week, let’s look at fasting.

Fasting primarily refers to abstaining.  The key fasting is the amount of intake.  Secondly, fasting can be from certain kinds of food.  We generally conjure the notion of ‘giving up snacks’ or chocolate or fast food or liquor.  That’s good.  After all, we might be indulging too much with any of these food items.  Lent provides purpose to fasting and it gives me six weeks to re-adjust my cravings.  Lenten fasting often works because it is a limited period of time: I can survive this discipline until Easter day.  Besides it helps me to grow in strength.

The spiritual purpose of fasting is to provide an opening of my heart to God.  If I am self-satisfied, I won’t look for God.  But spiritual wisdom knows that self-satisfaction is short-lived.  Material things corrupt or sour, and the disappointment is incredible.  On the other hand, if I depend on an obsession or addiction to ‘manage’ my life or to medicate me, this already is disappointing and leads to despair.

When fasting alters my awareness so that I can judge between what is necessary and what is superficial, between what is personal and what is socially contrived, I become a freer person.  I am able to go beyond peer pressure or opinion and act with inner strength and conviction.  That is not easy.  Among teens the notion of ‘abstinence’ connotes someone who is prudish, naïve, or marginal.  But it truly is a freedom based on interior centeredness and solidity.  That solidity will be tested by mocking, bullying, and gossip.  Don’t fall for it!  Weakness batters at solidity with marshmallow barbs…which, in time, show themselves to be fraudulent and immature.

Fasting in Lent might also take on the quality of re-adjusting my stewardship of time.  Look at your personal weekly schedule: How full is it?  How many of these appointments are busy-work? How much quality of life do these activities bring?  Lent lets me review my use of the gift of time.  Perhaps now is a time to pull back from some of these commitments in order to include prayer or some work of charity.  Maybe fasting from television will allow me to read, or less game time on the computer affords time for conversation with a neighbor or classmate.  Media has much good about it, but it also is our greatest source of distraction.  Distraction buffers our personal search for meaning.  Is now an opportunity for finding new meaning and purpose?

The spiritual foundation of fasting is not deadening, but enlivening.  If fasting works, then I shall become more astute at discerning excesses, distraction, and wants from needs.  Fasting offers me a renewed heart by which to love…to love God, myself and my neighbor.  Let us join with Christ this Lent and fast with hope.