Fasting for God: Inspiring Quotations on Self-restraint, Mindfulness & Spiritual Awareness
Fasting for God is an essential guide to scriptural fasting, tracing the history of fasting in Christian and other traditions. It examines the rare convergence of the spiritual and the material, the mystical and the medical. In contrast to most contemporary diet and health books, it highlights the reasons people have fasted for thousands of years, and the remarkable spiritual changes fasting produces in a person's lifestyle.
Although a fundamental practice of the early Church, spiritual fasting has declined significantly in modern Christianity. This decline is societally manifested in the obvious increase in obesity, in the lack of moral self-restraint and in widespread clerical turpitude.
The physical need for food, hunger, is not the same as appetite, the desire to consume, which in modern times is often driven by stress and emotions and manipulated by media and technology. Food deprivation for spiritual purposes affects our lifestyle and promotes self-awareness.
While advocating interfaith dialogue, the book does not propagate theological doctrines authoritative to any religion, nor does it endorse health remedies or dietary therapies. It doesn't try to make anyone a vegetarian, eat kosher food, fast Ramadan or observe Lent.
Fasting for God not only documents traditional wisdom and principles of the world's religions, but also helps in examining our life to determine what role fasting can play in our own personal spiritual development. Describing the transformative qualities of fasting, the quotes lead us to a deeper understanding of this ancient practice, thus, bringing us closer to ourselves, to our faith and to intimacy with God.
Selections:
A man who eats too much cannot strive against laziness, while a gluttonous and idle man will never be able to contend with sexual lust. Therefore, according to all moral teachings, the effort towards self-control commences with a struggle against the lust of gluttony-commences with fasting. LEO TOLSTOY].
... let us return from these concrete details to the essential, which is "to love fasting," as Saint Benedict says. Today's monks no longer practice it; they do not even know what it is. How could they "love" it? ... We shall practice the fast only if we love it. But to love it we need to experience its benefits, and thus we need to practice it. Happy he who breaks out of this circle, trusting in the wisdom of the Rule and trying it ... ADALBERT DE VOG ].
But then care must be taken, lest out of this freedom from fasting and abstinence] there grows a lazy indifference about killing the wantonness of the flesh; for the roguish son of] Adam is exceedingly tricky in looking for permission for himself, and in pleading the ruin of the body or of the mind; so some men jump right in and say it is neither necessary nor commanded to fast or to mortify the flesh, and are ready to eat this and that without fear, as if they, for a long time, had much experience of fasting, although they have never tried it. MARTIN LUTHER].
Today, especially in affluent societies, it is difficult to grasp the meaning of these Gospel words. Consumerism, instead of satisfying needs, constantly creates new ones, often generating excessive activism. Everything seems necessary and urgent and one risks not even finding the time to be alone with oneself for a while . . . Penitential fasting is obviously something very different from a therapeutic diet, but in its own way, it can be considered therapy for the soul. In fact practiced as a sign of conversion, it helps one in the interior effort of listening to God.. POPE JOHN PAUL II].
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