Hungry together Taking inspiration and instruction from Islam, a Catholic extols the virtues and the hardships of Lenten fasting
Repohl, Roger F.
Roger F. Repohl HUNGRY TOGETHER Fasting Ramadan style For the last two years during Lent, I have been practicing a loose version of the Islamic fast. I decided on this method of fasting after...
...It is part of every Muslim's personal jihad or "struggle," but because it is exactly alike for all and imposed on all but the weak it gives an acute sense of identity and commitment to a common faith...
...It builds solidarity and resolve...
...But I don't believe I'll be alone much longer...
...The ancient Latin preface for Lent, in words addressed to God, summarizes its effects: "Through bodily fasting, you rein in our imperfections, elevate the mind, lavishly bestow strength and merit...
...For thirty days, devout Muslims do not eat or drink anything from sunup to sundown...
...Living as I was in the most gluttonous country in the world, I thought, what could be more "relevant" than fasting...
...Today, both the individual benefits and the ritually confined common hardship of fasting have generally been lost in the Catholic church, with the exception of those in monastic life...
...Putting prayer time in place of eating time emphasizes daily the true meaning of the fast: the turn from self-centered desire toward total dependence on God...
...it rewards me daily for keeping it...
...Furthermore, any effort at reintroducing the fast must make-as Muslims do-the fundamental connection with the other two Lenten disciplines of prayer and almsgiving...
...Multiplying even that figure by a parish would result in a substantial sum to be earmarked for particular causes...
...My own Lenten fast saves me at least $25 a week in lunches and snacks, and I'm sure that's on the low end of many Americans' weekly expenditures for these items, children not excepted...
...Practically every Catholic spiritual writer up till the mid-1960s extolled the importance of fasting...
...It is one of the keys to self-mastery and, conversely, a turning away from self-obsession and toward total dependence on God...
...There is a great psychological advantage in drawing the lines of the fast so clearly...
...Last year, Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Michigan, issued a call to the people of his diocese for a Lent of "heavy-duty fasting...
...At the beginning of the day, you see exactly what is before you: no cutting corners, no excuses...
...This avoids scruples and self-delusion, and incidentally affords opportunities for wonderful lunch-time conversations on the spiritual life with your non-fasting friends and colleagues...
...But, as with athletic training, the flabbiness gets worked off and is replaced by increasing endurance, optimism, and wholeness...
...In my own version, I get up just before dawn-unusual for me-to eat, and then have dinner at 5:30 P.M., well before dusk late in Lent...
...Even this loose approximation of a dawn-to-dusk fast does two important things for me: It circumscribes the time of fasting, and it motivates me to start my day early, carving out time for prayer and reflection that I seldom make in my "Ordinary Time" mode of life...
...Muslims who are aged, infirm, traveling, pregnant, or nursing are exempt...
...I should also say that, while Muslims observe the fast for thirty days straight, I as a Catholic take off Sundays, the "resurrection days" not calculated into the forty days of Lent and the Christian tradition's own kind of motivator...
...Few ideas for group practices were suggested...
...It's rigorous, but not health-threatening...
...when faced with the bleakness of another week of Lent, I'd say to hell with it and guiltily eat and drink my way through half the refrigerator...
...Muslims I know who observe the Ramadan fast show no ill effects...
...If you succeed, you succeed...
...I have found that to be true...
...Roger F. Repohl teaches religious studies at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York...
...Excellent educational materials developed by a special diocesan task force on Lent provided a rich cate-chesis on the history, theology, and psychology of fasting, and suggested many possibilities, from traditional abstinence from food and drink to more contemporary acts of restraint, such as from compulsive shopping and TV viewing...
...Even my frequent failings at fasting are instructive...
...The Ash Wednesday liturgy begins with this passage from the prophet Joel (2:15-16): "Proclaim a fast, call an assembly, gather the people, notify the congregation...
...And in between-nothing...
...One of the most important benefits of the Muslims' Ramadan fast is the bond of solidarity it creates...
...Sharing the hardship also makes it much easier to bear...
...Provided you're healthy to begin with and make sure you take the early morning meal, there's little chance this fast can harm you...
...It is rigorous enough to make a difference in my life...
...Children before puberty are also exempt, but many Muslim parents gradually start their children fasting at a young age, so that even in childhood they begin to learn the spiritual benefits, strength of will, and the meaning of adult religious commitment that come from this practice...
...For me, the Lenten fast has long been a lonely, often embarrassing business, labeled by many as a useless vestige of a benighted, body-hating age...
...like the Law in Saint Paul, a fast I can't maintain only demonstrates the more my bondage to the flesh and my need to entrust my life to God's mercy and power...
...Fasting to me is the spiritual version of athletic training...
...It is a call that Muslims hear...
...As with so many other traditional practices abandoned after Vatican II, thirty years of lying fallow have made the ground rich for replanting the seeds of fasting in the communal life of the church...
...Two, that the less rigorous the fast, the less likely it was that I would keep it...
...Here, at the top of the Lenten liturgical agenda, is a call for a physical fast, and a corporate fast...
...On the contrary, it seems to steel them, not just spiritually and emotionally but physically, too...
...if you fail, you fail...
...there is far less chance of falling when your brothers and sisters are there to help you go on...
...The relationship between fasting and almsgiving is equally important: The fast is not just for the self but for the other...
...It is a given in both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, and has been a fixture in church life and liturgy from the earliest times...
...and it has a communal element that builds solidarity and resolve...
...The daytime fast, coupled with the nighttime feast, reawakens you to the truth that food and drink are a gift, not a given...
...Now it is time for the Catholic church to hear it again, too...
...All this is not to say it's easy to fast this way...
...The only element missing was a clear corporate thrust...
...Practicing a Lenten discipline based on the Islamic fast has changed all that for me: • It's clearly defined...
...Lastly, this balance between fasting and feasting is a powerful motivator to continue the discipline from day to day...
...To sustain themselves, they rise before dawn and have a hearty meal, and at dusk they share a literal "break-fast," often at their mosque and often with people who are hungry because of poverty, not devotion...
...I decided on this method of fasting after listening to Muslims of my acquaintance describe their observance of the month of Ramadan (which ended this year on February 8...
...The structure of the Ramadan fast appeals to everything I value in fasting...
...In 1966, when I was eighteen years old and just beginning to practice the Lenten fast, Pope Paul VI relaxed the universal rule for fast and abstinence for Catholics, relegating it to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday...
...Whatever discipline the church chooses in the future, I believe that it should be understood in terms of community practice: This is something that we are doing together, just as we celebrate the liturgy together...
...He appealed instead to the consciences of the faithful to find individual and "more relevant" disciplines and to focus on the "positive" elements of the Lenten tradition-prayer and works of mercy...
...It makes you keenly aware of your responsibility to give your gift to those who hunger and thirst because of life's circumstances rather than simply a choice of religious practice...
...Ramadan is actually a joyous time for Muslims because it balances deprivation with satisfaction...
...During the hours of darkness, moderate and responsible eating and drinking are not only permitted but encouraged, and in fact a whole tradition of special foods for the Ramadan pre-fast and "breakfast" has developed...
...Observant Muslims will not eat or drink after dawn or before dusk...
...I have attempted all kinds of "moderate" approaches- giving up this or that, not eating between meals, even trying to implement the church's own goofy definition of fasting as eating one main meal and two smaller meals that, taken together, can be no larger than the main one...
...I embraced the positive elements wholeheartedly, but found that the need to fast remained...
...But over the years, doing my post-Lenten evaluation, three things were always apparent: One, that I had no specific focus in my fasting...
...The fast puts you in touch with your own body, which, when you are healthy, you may take for granted and even abuse by constant and largely unthinking consumption...
...It is balanced, rewarding, and motivating...
...And three, that I had no mechanisms of positive reinforcement...
...In the beginning, there is a period of utter distraction and agonized craving...
Vol. 124 • February 1997 • No. 3
