Fasting
(Il digiuno, Città Nuova, Rome, 2006; 70 pages). Original in Italian.
Available also in English and Polish.
This
book is a brief monography on fasting in the Christian tradition. The practice
of fasting, since the time of Jesus and
the Apostles, represents one of the main aspects of Christian asceticism, and
the Church always insisted on its importance. Today, however, as a consequense
of the changes which have been made in the Catholic Church's discipline during
the last centuries and especially after the Second Vatican Council, fasting for
Catholics risks not only being relegate to few days a year, but also being
ignored and misunderstood in its profound and spiritual meaning.
This
book intends to recall to the true Christian sense of fasting, so that the
faithful of today may reappropriate that great spiritual and ascetical treasure
of the biblical and patristic tradition on fasting.
The
book is brief, popular, readable, but at the same time rigorous and based on
the ground-texts of Christian religion: the Bible and the ancient Church
Fathers. The reader will be able, in this way, to understand the meaning (and
also the practice) of fasting in old Israel
DETAILED INDEX
A first essential feature of
fasting, especially present in the Old Testament, is the fact that fasting is
an act of going back to God, of
conversion, repentance, penance, a remembering of God. Fasting becomes in this
way, also in the Christian perspective, a penitential act: it is a mourning for
Judas treason (Wednesday fasting) and for the Passion of the Lord (Friday and
Lent fasting), a way of showing oneself grieved together with Christ and
because of one own's sins, a sincere frame of mind to implore and to pray. Even
the pangs of hunger, during fasting, become then a continuous call to God.
Another kind of fasting is the "eucharistic" one, a sign of the man's
sacred respect in front of God's presence.
CHAPTER
II: Separation from heathen or brotherly
table?
In the Old Testament, the abstention
from many kinds of food, that God prescribed to the Jews, aimed also to
distinguish and separate the chosen people from heathen. In the New Testament
this concept receives a new light by a dimension of brotherliness and
evangelization. The Christian faithful must follow strictly the rules on
fasting and must keep himself away from the lifestyle of the irreligious world,
but love, charity and hospitality, must always prevail, against every
Pharisaism and exclusivism. The Church Fathers insisted as well on the
importance of fasting as a way of economizing, in order to give food and money
to the poor: it is a kind of social justice, based on charity. So, fasting is a
part of a larger aspect of Christian teaching: poverty, as a personal and
social choice of the faithful.
CHAPTER
III: Fasting as a training of the mind
Fasting means renunciation: in this
way it makes us capable to defeat the power that passions and desires have upon
us. It is a means to take back under control one own's mind and body,
delivering it from the bondage of irrational impulses and of craving.
Consequently, fasting cannot be seen as a merely exterior formality: on the
contrary it is a returning in the depths of one own's heart, a silencing the
uproar of passions and a purification of the mind.
CHAPTER
IV: Fasting as a purification
Already in the Greek and Roman world
(especially amongst the Pythagoreans) fasting was considered an excellent form
of purification and detoxification of the body (and consequently of the mind
too). The Church accepted this conception. For this reason, the fasting of Lent
-for example- requires the exclusion not only of meat, but also of other "heavy"
and "polluting" food for the body, as wine, dairy products and eggs.
The Church Fathers always considered fasting (and more generally the whole
alimentary discipline, that had to be as light and vegetarian as possible) a
way to purificate the organism. If the body is weighed down by the "heavy
humours" of meat and other similar foods, also the mind's clearness and
sharpness are directly damaged. Besides, a diet based on frequent fasting and
on light foods is an essential part of a healthy and natural style of life.
CHAPTER
V: The practical rules on fasting in the
Church's teaching
This chapter offers a brief survey
of the evolution of Christian fasting's
discipline: how used to fast the believers in the times of the Apostles and in
the first centuries of Christianity? Which are the main changes brought in by
the Catholic Church, especially from the Middle Age? How is -in short- the
discipline of fasting maintained till now in other Christian Churchs? And in
the other religions?
Click here for:
The Foreword of Nicholas Sagovsky
The Review on "The Tablet"
Where to buy it: English Edition (6 €), Italian Edition (7 £)
The other books of Dag Tessore
