Fasting and feasting. . .

I have a doctor who routinely fasts for health purposes.  I know of people who fast for mental health purposes (meditation).  I know of Christians who fast both seasonally (like during Lent) and who fast during times of devotion and prayer during other times.  Fasting is a good and salutary practice.  Lutherans who are essentially adverse to anything approaching a rule must be reminded from time to time that Jesus did not say if you fast but when and therefore presumes fasting is part of our prayer life and disciplined life of faith.  I could spend pages of digital ink on the subject of fasting but there is another aspect to this.  Fasting from the ordinary food of mortal life only emphasizes the feasting upon the food of everlasting life.

The contrast of fasting is not between a full plate of your favorite vittles and and empty plate without them.  It is between the emptiness of the food of this mortal life, good as it is from God the giver, and the fullness of the food of everlasting life -- also a good gift from God the giver.  Nobody is called to fast without the feast.  Sure, there may be times in our lives when circumstance or geography prevents us from receiving the Eucharist regularly and we may still fast during those times as part of the obedience of faith, the clear contrast here is not between the food that makes our mouths water and none but the food of this life (as wonderful or ordinary as it might be) and the food of everlasting life (the foretaste of the eternal in the bread which is Christ's flesh and the cup of His blood).

I fear we have lost this connection.  The bookends of this life are not fasting and feasting from food at our tables at home but the fasting and feasting between the food that we must eat to live another day and that food that feeds us to eternal life.  The food that satisfies is not simply the food that meets our appetites in the moment but that provides the food that alone satisfies our hunger and quenches our thirst.  This is clearly a contrast between the earthly and the heavenly.  It is not about food being good or bad.  The food of this life that feeds our bodies is good and a gift from God.  It is not bad because it cannot do what it was never made to do.  The good of everlasting life is good and a gift from God.  It is good because it does what it promises to do.  Both are good.  Fasting only helps us sort out the line between them and gives us perspective.

Fasting never says that we must abstain from the Eucharist when we fast from earthly food for our bodies.  Indeed, this is the great mystery.  While we abstain from earthly food for our bodies, we are fed the heavenly food for body and soul.  Unlike those who wait until evening hours to eat, we feast upon the Body and Blood of our Lord when it is offered and our fasting is itself a preparation for the feasting upon this Eucharistic food.  It is not symbolic eating and drinking but real.  The food is not for the imagination but for body and soul.  It is real food for real hunger in real people.  Fasting serves to highlight the gift of the Eucharist, acknowledging what the ordinary food for the body can do and what the extraordinary food which is Christ's flesh and blood do for us body and soul.  Maybe if we emphasized the connection, the self-denial would not have to be justified by medical benefit nor would it seem like we have given up everything.  Perhaps this might explain why, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus cautions against a fasting which looks sad.  Our fast is not from His feast and therefore we rejoice and are glad even in the times of self-denial.

Growing up we did not eat breakfast on Sunday.  It was a fasting enforced not by rubric or rule but by hunger for the Lord's Body and Blood.  It was, I learned, a way of acknowledging that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord and that the food which satisfies our every hunger was nothing less than Christ's flesh and blood in the Eucharist.