FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Fasting

Rant Number 498      23 July 2012

Fasting: not just a traditional religious practice but a revolutionary act. A rejection of ‘modernity’. A slap in the face of secularism. Part of a great warfare... Now dig this:

An Oriental despot once summoned the Christian leaders of his domains. ‘Do you believe everything that is written in your holy book?’ he demanded. ‘Yes’, they naturally replied. An evil grin came over the tyrant’s face. He ordered his minions to hold up a Bible open at St Matthew 17 vv. 20-21. ‘...if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you will say to this mountain “Move from here to there”, and it will move and nothing will be impossible to you’, Jesus says. The despot then told the Church leaders: ‘There is this big mountain in my kingdom. You have 40 days to move it, by your faith alone. If you fail, I will exterminate you and all your people.’

You can imagine the Christians’ dismay. They knew moving a mountain was easier than trying to reason with an evil ruler. What did they do? They started by calling a fast. A long, arduous fast involving the whole community. Accompanied by heartfelt prayers and almsgiving. It all lasted 40 days. At last the leaders assembled. The tyrant stood by, his guards with swords drawn, eager to begin their butchery. All together the Christians commanded the mountain: ‘Move!’ And, lo and behold, the mountain shifted its place – it moved! The despot relented - happy ending.

Writing about fasting in Ramadhan is a happy spiritual task for the priest because fasting and spirituality are holy, twin sisters. Er...Maybe three sisters, if you include, be amazed...war!

Fasting is not exclusive to Islam. It came into Christianity from Judaism. The Torah, the Law of Moses mandates only one strict fast day, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. But the Jews fasted voluntarily on other occasions. Moses, God’s mouthpiece, fasted 40 days and 40 nights, while waiting to receive the Ten Commandments. Still, the Hebrew prophets warned that not all religious fasting is pleasing to God. Isaiah reproaches those who while fasting sought their own pleasure and oppressed the workers. The inner disposition of the heart also is key. Smug hypocrites will benefit nothing from fasting. Hence St Luke has Jesus placing a technically sinful tax collector above a twice-a-week fasting, self-righteous Pharisee. Shocking, but right. Jesus of Nazareth was God’s spanner in the works of the Jewish Law.

Like Moses, Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights before withstanding the temptations of the Evil One, ‘eating nothing’, St Luke says. It was training in holy warfare, before the battle with Satan. Also a challenge to rationalists, sceptics and modernists. How could any man do that? But of course the Messiah was no mere man. He could hardly have done less than Moses, anyway. (My old Jesuit teacher, Father Dino Dini, once wondered how the Devil managed to set Jesus on the pinnacle of the Jerusalem Temple, high above the city.Sancta Simplicitas! Doesn’t the Devil too have supernatural powers?)

Fasting as a rejection of ‘modernity’. Yes, because fasting has nothing to do with dieting. It is a severe form of self-abnegation. A proclamation of faith in God, a total trust in His supreme power, as my story makes clear. The early Christian monks and ascetics like St Anthony in the Egyptian desert fasted much. They deliberately pushed away the succulent fleshpots of a bloated pagan culture to affirm their hunger for Christ & for the One True God. Shallow mockers like Voltaire denigrated those brave spiritual athletes – in truth, they were far more admirable and extraordinary then today’s Olympic champions. Because they fought not against flesh and blood but against the powers of darkness above and below...

Sawm, the Ramadhan fast is likewise an explicit affirmation of Islam. It calls Muslims to follow unquestioning one of the five pillars of their faith. A reminder of the primeval message of the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet. In an important sense, it is a contradiction of so-called ‘modernity’. Olympic Games’ Muslim sportsmen will have to compete without food or water in the Summer heat all day long. Sounds mad and masochistic, doesn’t it? And unnecessary for any modern person. But Islam does not swallow the values of modern culture hook, line and sinker. Ramadhan is a summons back to the original, pre-modern and, today, anti-modern message. Cultures change, kingdoms rise and fall, rulers come and go but the Muslims fast as from the beginning, their rules and faith firm and unchanged. So Ramadhan means a slap in the face of relativism, of our arrogant, pompous and purblind secular culture. The kind of meek, establishment ‘rice Muslims’ fostered by Downing St may dislike this way of putting it. Too radical, even menacing. Well, too bad. Pious believers know better, I am confident.

Fasting as warfare. The Hebrews, the Bible records, fasted in morning, in times of danger, in repentance, after suffering defeat and humiliation, to remember past deliverances and before great exploits. The latter interest me, especially. This for believers is a perilous time. A time that calls for heroism, for noble, great undertakings, in the face of resurgent paganism and its many, squalid minions in the West. So the priest sees fasting as a prelude to holy warfare, huh!

All Christians are called to be heroic, I believe with St Jose Maria Escriva, but sacred tradition also stresses the example of holy men and holy women. The monks. Austerity and self-denial, such as embodied in fasting, in the subjugation of carnality and gluttony, were incumbent on the religious of the great Orders like the Cistercians, the Carthusians and the Carmelites. It was Christendom’s heroic era. The priest sees no hope unless monasticism is revived. Maybe in new ways and new forms. Where are the St Dominic, the St Francis, the St Bernard of our time? Those charismatic men who changed the world?

This Ramadhan the priest shall fast – in his own way - and pray, Deo Volente, for the monks’ return.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli