A Season of Fasting

A few thoughts on a Lenten exercise

Jesus Tempted in the Wilderness by James Tissot Nantes

Our Church has gone soft, and so have an alarming number of the men in it. Remember this as we enter Lent.

Once upon a time the season made demands on the faithful: No meat and no dairy for the whole forty days. No food at all on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Only bread, water, and salt during Holy Week. One meal plus a "collation" for all other days of Lent.

Over the centuries those demands were relaxed, almost to the point of nonexistence. What the Church asks today barely even counts as "fasting." Just two times per year, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Catholics are supposed to limit ourselves to one meal which can be supplemented by two light meals—enough to make people feel inconvenienced, but not enough to actually challenge them.

Think about it this way: every single day of Lent was more rigorous for the early Christians than Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are for us.

At the heart of so many “reforms” which have lessened the demands on the faithful—not just pertaining to fasting, but to everything—is a tragicomic misunderstanding of human beings: people despise a spirit of excessive accommodation and a culture of low standards. And the Church’s unwillingness to impose real demands on the faithful betrays a lack of confidence. Why would anyone want to belong to an institution that lacks confidence? What’s the point? This is especially apparent in the “updates” and “modernizations” that have been imposed on the Church in recent decades—and the resulting decline in Mass attendance.

Those who want to weaken the Church are thrilled to see the discipline of fasting mostly abolished. If you wish to reverse that trend, consider going a little harder this Lent.

Fasting

I’m convinced that fasting is one of the best things we can do to become more formidable men, almost instantly. At least a few times per year a man should avoid calories for twenty-four hours or more, to test himself and to learn that he can go further and suffer more than he thought. Fasting means grabbing your weakness and throttling it, in several ways.

The spiritual benefits are time-tested.

“Fasting,” according to St Augustine, “cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one’s flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, kindles the true light of chastity.”

St Thomas Aquinas notes three reasons for fasting: “1) to restrain the desires of the flesh; 2) to raise the mind to contemplate sublime things; 3) to make satisfaction for our sins. These are good and noble things, and so fasting is virtuous.”

The effects are powerful enough even to give the faster a certain respect in the eyes of our spiritual adversary: “The enemy,” says St Francis de Sales, “stands more in awe of those whom he knows can fast.” Of course the point is not that you are out to impress Satan, but that his “awe” reflects a real spiritual strength on your part.

The only thing I can add is that while fasting your prayers will be all the more potent and you will have the opportunity to do good with them. We need your supercharged prayers for our country right now.

Cognitive benefits can follow too. This one can be tricky because the temptation to seek distraction and dopamine hits in the place of food can be even more powerful than your literal hunger; a man must be master of his attention during the trip into the desert. But if you can overcome this temptation, levels of focus can rocket upwards. When you are no longer expending so much energy on digestion, that power can be redirected and reality can be seen more clearly.

The physical upsides are the most surprising. I was once under the impression that a man’s body wastes away during a fast—which only increased my aversion to the modest requests of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But something very different is happening. Inflammation drops, HGH production ramps up, immunity increases, and more. The list will only get longer as more research is done. Most interesting is the process by which the body, once it has burned the readily available calories, turns to consuming its own cells. The technical term is autophagy (Greek for “self-devouring”) and the beauty of autophagy is that our body first consumes its damaged cells. This means healing happens. I am convinced cases of cancer would nosedive if men fasted like they once did. Far from wasting away, a man can emerge physically better than he was at the start of the fast, especially if he can extend it to a few days.

But the larger lesson of fasting is that you can’t really divide the benefits into clean categories: spiritual, cognitive, physical. What fasting teaches so powerfully is the unity of your incarnated existence. I have never felt my spiritual sensitivities turned up so high as on a fast, and at the same time I have never felt so deeply embodied. In other words, this discipline kills those dumb notions of the neo-Manichaean heresy (physical: bad, spiritual: good). Your body is not a flesh-prison in which your soul is stuck, nor is it a machine piloted by some spiritual essence. As the Catechism says, “spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.” That is why a practice which brings such intense spiritual benefits also strengthens the body. Fasts should be seen as special training in chivalry, a code of spiritual and physical excellence.

There’s obviously a limit to what one man can do in reviving a distressingly soft Church—but at the same time the choices of one man mean everything, and echo throughout Eternity. Worth thinking about this season.

Postscript:

A few thoughts for those who haven’t fasted much.

• The fasting I’m talking about is fasting from calories. Some guys apparently abstain from water as well. This is too much for me.

• The gurus say coffee and tea are allowed, but no cream or sweeteners. Again, the point is no calories.

• I don’t love intermittent fasting and prefer a few longer fasts over frequent short ones. If they work well for you, that’s great. But intermittent fasts are not quite what I’m getting at in this essay.

• I avoid physical exertion during fasts. Walks and mobility sessions are the extent of it for me.

• You will need electrolytes to calm your nerves and your stomach. Before I learned this, sleep was all but impossible because my stomach was twisting in discomfort. Sprinkling salt into a glass of water a couple times per day will do wonders. I also use a topical magnesium spray.

• Be prepared for the chill. Digestion is an involved process which generates much heat—and when it’s not happening you will often feel cold. If you have the opportunity, a sauna session does wonders to offset this effect.

• Time takes on strange properties during a fast. This is one of the most interesting experiences—the days become almost literally longer. When you don't eat meals, don’t prepare meals, and don't clean up after meals, suddenly a couple hours are freed up every day. Still more time presents itself when you don’t go to the gym. You also don’t need as much sleep at night when the body hasn’t expended so much energy on digestion. In all these ways, the day is longer. We all say we want more time—but using it well is no small challenge. A man ought to approach fast with the attitude of a warrior-monk going into the desert to do battle with all that is weak within himself. A dopamine fast should probably accompany an actual fast: no pointless scrolling, no podcasts, no background music, no Youtube, etc. All that extra time freed up by fasting needs to be dedicated to prayer, work, and study—and a man needs to be belligerent about making this happen.