It seems a pity that ordinarily both the defence and the rejection of fasting are based on the simple lines of health. No doubt these should control the amount of fasting, for we have to take care of our bodies as things given us by God. But fasting is not prescribed because it is good for our health (though it may be), nor is it to be rejected because it is bad for our health (though that also may be a perfectly proved result). These considerations must affect and affect seriously our practice of fasting; but fasting itself is based upon a far higher law namely, the principle of penance preached by our Lord. It must never be forgotten that the revelation of Christ did not come to us in order to enable us to lead happier lives in every way; our pathway may or may not be smooth. But in any case it is foolish to suppose that religion has as its object to make us healthy, to keep us fit, and to do all the other wonderful things that the socalled "muscular Christian" perpetually promises. No doubt it is perfectly true that a good living man is likely to be in a very fit state of health; but the trouble is when this fit state of health is made the test of a good life; for following on this line comes the axiom that everything that is detrimental to us must be at once given up. The half truth that lies behind this saying is really obvious; but it cannot be formulated so roughly. Rather we should remember that in our following of Christ we are taught that the daily cross is a mark both of our love and of His; and the daily cross must surely be something that demands a sacrifice from us. To surrender to God something which costs us nothing can hardly be said to be after the model of Christ.
We have, therefore, to deny ourselves with a denial hardly less effective or brutal than Peter's denial of Christ. Now I am constituted of body and soul, and of both must I pay tithes to the Lord. Both must feel the effects of this denial, for I cannot be said to deny myself unless it is something so thorough and effective that my whole being makes its sacrifice. Undoubtedly the soul is of even greater value than the body, and, of the two, its sacrifices are the more pleasing to God, for its self-seeking is more harmful than the other. The sins of flesh never received from our Lord so severe a castigation as sins of the spirit, no doubt because they are less dishonourable, profaning a less worthy vessel. It was the failings of the Pharisee, cant, hypocrisy, pride, which were far more the subjects of His displeasure; the ruin they effected was greater and seemed unlikely to be detected by those who suffered from them. Yet the soul alone can hardly represent the man; and just as body as well as soul must worship God in genuflexions and prostrations, so must body as well as soul deny itself for Christ. The parallel of sacrifice and worship is indeed complete, for both oblige only when possible. And this is the key to our attitude on fasting, a conscious recognition of the due mortification to which my whole being must submit. No one part of me must escape; and so for the body we have the whole series of penances which are grouped under the heading of fasting, the acts of self-denial that bring under subjection all the wayward and restless desires of the flesh.
Yet surely there are times and conditions of life when fasting becomes impossible? Assuredly; and the Church herself allows for this fact by her own principle of fixing the age limit before which no one is bound and after which the obligation ceases. She implies, at least, that certain forms of bodily self-denial are at certain times of life imprudent; indeed, the whole tendency of all the commandments of the Church is only to impose them when possible. It follows, therefore, that, once it can be ascertained that it is morally impossible for me to fast, for me the personal obligation at once ceases. Yet even so it must be insisted upon that the reason to be alleged for this dispensation from fasting is not that the body suffers, but that it suffers in such a way as to prevent other duties from being performed: the mere fact that physically I feel weakened is no bar at all. The following headache, etc., are certainly to be expected; and, indeed, it would seem as though these very things were the reason for the fasting being prescribed. But the sufficient motive for being dispensed by the circumstances of the case can only be that my physical weakness will not allow me to fulfil certain other obligations incumbent on me. It is, then, simply a question; not that fasting puts me to inconvenience that is what it is intended to do, but it puts me to such inconvenience that other things which it is my duty to perform cannot be properly done. It is the recognition of the crossing of one law by a higher law, the duty of the particular form of self-denial being forbidden by the duty of a certain way of life. Hence really I have to renounce fasting, not for reasons of health, but for the more perfect following of Christ.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.