UNDERSTANDING FASTING THRU ASH WEDNESDAY BIBLICAL PASSAGES
Ever wonder why the Church publicly displays ash on the foreheads of her people on Ash Wednesday, making it an outward and visible sign of fasting and yet, the Gospel reading on the day tells us to conduct our pious acts of fasting, alms-giving and prayer in secret? Is this a direct contradiction?
Dr Brant Pitre's talk helped me understand Christian fasting through a deep dive into the Ash Wednesday Scripture Readings:
- The first reading every year is taken from the Book of Joel, and speaks about a day of public fast,
- The Gospel passage from Matthew speaks about conducting the spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer and alms-giving in private during the season of Lent
The notes below are taken from a talk on Ash Wednesday by Dr Brant Pitre
(Dr Brant Pitre is an American New Testament scholar and Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute)
Link to the Youtube recording is at the end of this post.
The first reading on Ash Wednesday - Joel 2:12-18
Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the aged; gather the children, even infants at the breast. Let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her canopy. Between the vestibule and the altar, let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep. Let them say, “Spare your people, O Lord, and do not make your heritage a mockery, a byword among the nations. Why should it be said among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ ” Then the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people.
- Every year at Lent, this passage from Joel is read.
- The primary reason is because the description Joel is giving in this passage is of a public fast, a public day of fasting, an official fast day, where the priests and prophets of Israel would call the people to unite together in solidarity in communion with one another in a collective fast.
- This is so that all the people would fast, put on sack cloth and ashes as a corporate, community sign of repentance for their own sins but also of supplication for the sins of others, so that God might have mercy on a sinful people.
- In this passage, God makes it clear to the people that the ultimate reason for fasting and prayer is so that people will come back to God “…return to the Lord your God…”
- This is what God does at the time of Joel, and this is what the Church calls us to do every Lent.
- Lent is a great time for people to come back to God - those having been away from the Church, those who have not been going to mass, or those going to mass but are caught in a habitual sin…. he church takes the words of Joel, at the beginning of Lent, saying to all her people in the Church to return to God, with weeping and fasting, on this great solemn day of a fast.
- Although the church calls us to an outward sign, ultimately it is the interior repentance that is needed.
- That is why we have the powerful verses, “rend your hearts and not your clothing…”. This does not mean God does not need us to do the external signs, but rather, in additional to the external signs, God really wants his people to tear open their hearts, to turn away from their lives of sin in repentance and come back to God with all their hearts, minds and strengths.
- In order to do this, we have to use our bodies to help focus our souls on God. Because the reality is that we are body and soul composites.
THE POWER OF FASTING
- Fasting is a very powerful way to get our minds off pleasing the body with food and drink, and focus our minds on repentance of sins and focus on God.
- When we abstain from food and drink, our body quickly because we are not feeding it, and puts us in a state of awareness/alertness. And if we understand the reason why we are fasting, then all day long, we are reminded by the state of our body about the season, about the Church – and this helps us to pray, helps us to focus, to be in a state of spiritual alertness, which we will not have if we went about an ordinary day eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, and snacking.
- Fasting is a very powerful way to unite our soul and our body.
- The Jews do this every year, a day of atonement, a day of public fasting (Yom Kippur). On that day, every Jewish person is called to deny themselves (Lev 16) – refraining from food, drinks, bathing, anointing etc, in order to completely devote themselves to prayer and penance that day.
Ash Wednesday is also the beginning of the season of Lent. It is a season of private fasting, secret fasting, secret prayer and secret alms giving.
So in addition to the The church wants to make sure that throughout the season of Lent, we are doing our prayer, and our pious practices quietly and secretly.
THE PRIVATE FAST
The Gospel reading on Ash Wednesday - Mat 6:1-6, 16-19
Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
- Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent.
- During Lent, we do private acts of repentance.
- The church reminds us not to do righteousness in order to be seen by others. One of the temptations of engaging in pious practices is we can get spiritually prideful. Jesus knows spiritual pride is a temptation. So he says - make sure that when we perform these pious acts, we do them in secret.
- He commands specifically three spiritual disciplines:
- Alms giving
- Giving possessions to the poor/needy or to the church.
- Jesus expects his disciples to be regular alms-giver, and to do it in secret
- So that our reward will be from our Father in heaven and not from any other.
- Prayer
- Jesus expects his disciples to be regular pray-ors, not occasionally pray.
- A disciple of Jesus regularly prays, and do that in private.
- Fasting
- Jesus expects his disciples to fast regularly.
- Fasting is a biblical practice both in the OT and NT.
- The basic meaning of fasting means either to abstain from meat, or to abstain from food and drinks. It can take different forms.
- In the tradition of the church, the meaning of fasting is to abstain from food and drink until the evening, meaning one simple meal a day.
- Jews in the first century practiced this, they fasted twice a week, traditionally on Wednesdays and Fridays.
- And Jesus commands that these private fasting to be done in secret.
It is worth noting that the Gospel is specific to say "whenever you pray..... whenever you fast.....whenever you give alms..." It does not give an option by saying "if you pray...if you fast...if you give alms." So these spiritual practices are specifically commanded by Jesus.
ABOUT ABSTINENCE
- The Gospel passage from Matthew tells us that Lent is not just about abstinence.
- Most people today have reduced Lent to abstinence - to give up something (meat, chocolate, coffee, social media etc)
- But Lent is not to be reduced to abstinence, that has never been the tradition of the church.
- Lent is always a season of three spiritual disciplines - fasting, prayer and alms giving.
- And during Lent, we intensify our regular fasting, alms-giving and prayer, so that it becomes an intense period of spiritual purification, repentance from sin and offering sacrifices of love to God.
ABOUT THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS
Matthew 4 Jesus goes out to the desert and the devil tempts him with three temptations
- to turn stone to bread
- to possess all the kingdoms of the world
- to show he is the messiah by jumping off the temple
What Jesus does in resisting these three temptations is to undo the three temptations of teh fall.
In Genesis, it says that Adam and Eve took the fruit of the tree of knowledge because it was
- good for food (the lust of the flesh)
- delight to the eye (the lust of the eye)
- desire to make one wise (the pride of life)
These three temptations we all face (pleasure, possession and pride) - and these three temptations lay at the root of all human sinfulness.
Jesus goes into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights and he overcomes the 3 temptations:
- the temptation to pleasure,
- the temptation to possession and
- the temptation of pride (to prove he is the son of God).
Unlike Adam who fell to each of these temptation, Jesus overcomes each of the three temptations with humility .
And so what He calls us to do during Lent is to fight to overcome those three temptations.
And for 40 days, the Church calls us to
- to intensify our fasting - to overcome our disordered attachment to physical pleasures.
- to intensify our giving of alms - to overcome our disordered attachment to possessions & money
- to intensify our prayer - to overcome our disordered self love, our vanity & our pride.
And to put in place a growing gift in the virtue of humility.
These three spiritual disciplines is the essence of Christian discipleship, to overcome the triple concupiscence, making the season of Lent so much more powerful and filled with grace.
Link to Dr Pitre's talk on Youtube
The notes above are extracted from time period 11:00 to 33:00
The Biblical Roots of Ash Wednesday
Comments
Post a Comment