There Was Fasting In Paradise
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 12:48 PM
The Holy Father has written us a letter to help us benefit fully from our Lenten practices.
Read it here, its main theme is fasting.
I love the way Benedict always starts with the practical before leading us to the sublime, and this letter is no exception. Rather than starting with pieties, he asks a blunt question about fasting: what good is it? Read the whole thing to find his answer, but I’ll highlight two ideas that jumped out at me.
Since we (or at least I) tend to think of fasting solely in terms of liberation from and reparation for sin, I found this observation surprising: In the very first pages of Sacred Scripture, the Lord commands man to abstain from partaking of the prohibited fruit:
“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gn 2, 16-17). Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil observes that “fasting was ordained in Paradise,” and “the first commandment in this sense was delivered to Adam.” He thus concludes: “ ‘You shall not eat’ is a law of fasting and abstinence” (cf. Sermo de jejunio: PG 31, 163, 98).”
So, while it’s true that fasting can help free us from disordered tendencies, its first instance was positive: as an expression of love for God.
Secondly, the Holy Father describes fasting as ordered towards the other traditional Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. This is because fasting opens us to “the other.” It makes us more spiritually sensitive.
Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word.
And it makes us more open to others.
Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger.
Isn’t that lovely? The letter concludes with his Lenten counsel for all of us, and grants us his blessing:
May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Causa nostrae laetitiae, accompany and support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a “living tabernacle of God.” With these wishes, while assuring every believer and ecclesial community of my prayer for a fruitful Lenten journey, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing.
P.S. This photo is from the Pope’s Mass at Santa Sabina Church in Rome this morning.
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