Anyone ever recall hearing a sermon on fasting? That’s when you don’t eat, you know, fasting? One, two. We don’t talk about it much because we don’t do it much. I’d like to talk about fasting today because I think it’s a lost part of our Christian heritage. I think that if we could regain a sense of the need to fast that we might be a holier people and a holier church. As a matter of fact, I’m convinced of it. Currently we fast only on two days a year, on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. There are a billion of us Catholics and all throughout the world, as a family we make the sacrifice of fasting on those two days only. Even then the fast is minimized. By the way, pick up a copy of the Lenten regulations as you leave today, we have this outlined. The fast says you can eat one full meal and then two lesser meals, not to equal a full meal. You can gain weight on that fast. I don’t know what wimp in Rome wrote that regulation about fasting.

Then we have days of abstinence, and that means no meat. All the Friday’s of Lent are days of abstinence, so you’re going to have to just eat a lobster or something that night. Oh what we do for you, Lord. Even then, Catholics fight it. Can’t eat meat on Friday, who says so. There is this story an Irishman, Fr. Murphy, went to a restaurant on a Friday in Lent and there was O’Toole eating a hamburger. He says, "O’Toole, what are you doing? It’s Friday." He says, "So what Father." He says, "You’re eating meat, that’s beef you’re eating." O’Toole says, "Tain’t beef at all. It’s a hamburger. The hamburger’s ground up into almost nothing. It was beef, it’s no longer, you can’t call that beef." Father Murphy says, "That’s the most imaginative excuse for a sin I’ve ever heard in me life, and I’ve heard a lot of them. You know, you need to so some penance. That’s a very serious sin. The priest’s house is very cold. I’ll tell you what. Bring me a cord of wood this week and we’ll call it even." So on Wednesday O’Toole comes knocking and says, "I’ve got the wood for you Father. Where do you want me to put it?" He says, "Leave it outside there. I’ll stack it later." About two hours later, Father Murphy opens his door and there is this 6-foot high pile of sawdust. Sawdust. It’s ground up. It’s not really wood anymore. You’ve got to have the straight man; you know that’s very important. Fasting. I was waiting to use that story since I got here. You’ll hear it again next year. My old parish was great because they used to forget everything every year.

Fasting is religious and it’s not only Christian. As a matter of fact, we are probably, of the world’s religions, the least willing to fast. Buddhists fast. It’s an integral part, an expression of their faith, and of their philosophy of life. Muslims fast, you know, they have a month of fasting each year called Ramadan. It’s one of the tenets of Islam to fast during the month of Ramadan. They take nothing from sun up to sun down. Hindu fast. Gandhi used fasting as a weapon against the British. God bless him. The Jews fast. The Jews have always found fasting to be important. They fasted to repent from sins, to prepare for war, to prevent war. They fasted when there was a death or when someone was very ill, and so fasting is a part of their religion. "Blow the trumpets; proclaim a fast" is written in the scriptures. And indeed, we Christians, in the beginning, fasted frequently. In the old church Wednesdays and Fridays were fast days, and it was considered a communal form of penance. It also prepared us for the great celebrations of the year.

Indeed even when I was young, there was a Eucharistic fast where you were not allowed to take anything from midnight until you received Holy Communion. All of Lent was a fast day in the early church. Lent is forty days of penance. Forty is the scriptural number for a period of penance, for purgation, when God destroyed the world by fire, it rained forty days and forty nights, Moses was in the desert 40 years, Jesus fasted for 40 days, Moses fasted for 40 days. Anyone here been married for 39 years? You have one more year. Then it’ll be great. Believe me Carol, he’ll change. So 40, that’s the number of penance, and that’s why Lent has 40 days of penance.

But why the fast? It’s good for the soul. Jesus fasted, and if Jesus fasted, then we need to fast. Indeed, he told us to fast. That’s what the Gospel said today, "A time will come when the Bridegroom will be taken away, and that day we will fast." In the Old Testament, Hannah fasted. She was a prayer intercessor, and a prophetess. In the New Testament, Anna was the same. They fasted, and their prayers were always answered. Daniel fasted, Moses fasted, even Americans fast. That surprised me. I was doing some research last week and in the early days of our country, you could actually speak about God if you were a politician. There was an article in the paper that George Bush is mocked in Europe for talking about God, considered the like the Ayatollah of America because he mentions God’s name. George Washington mentioned God’s name. Even before Washington, in 1774 when the British had an embargo against Boston, the colonial legislative body declared a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer to ask for divine intervention. In one of his journals, George Washington wrote, "I went to church today and fasted all day for the country." John Adams declared a period of fasting. He asked the churches of America to pray and to fast in May of 1798, as it appeared we might go to war with France. He wrote to the churches and said, "With deep humility acknowledge before God, the sins and transgressions with which we are justly charged as individuals and as a nation, that our nation may be protected from all the dangers that are threatening." The fourth president, James Madison, called for fasting when we fought Britain in war, and Abraham Lincoln, that religious fanatic, declared a fast three times during the Civil War. So, it’s American, it’s Hindu, it’s Buddhist, it’s Moslem, it’s Christian, it’s Jewish. Fasting. Our Lady tells us to fast. Mary tells us that fasting is an important part. If you accept the apparitions, which most Catholics do, of Mary, certainly the major apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima, etc., she tells us that fasting is something we can do, along with prayer and adoration and the rosary, to bring about a change in the world.

We are to fast, but for the right reasons, not to show our pride, but to show our dependence on God. The resolutions we make, you know these spiritual resolutions that we sometimes break, sometimes when we fail; they’re more effective, because we’re reminded of our weakness. We are reminded of our fallibility, we are reminded of God’s incredible providence and strength. Don’t fast to lose weight. God doesn’t care what you weigh. He doesn’t care at all. That’s no reason to fast. Fasting is a prayer except that it doesn’t use words. It uses the whole body. St. Augustus said, "Do you want your prayer to go quickly to God? Then give it two wings, one of fasting and one of almsgiving." Fasting denies us instant gratification. Oh, do we need some denial, some discipline. You know the root of the word discipline is disciple. We are so used to instant gratification. We get what we want when we want it. Fasting says no. Fasting helps us identify with the poor and those who are genuinely hungry. Fasting works. The disciples complained to Jesus once that they couldn’t cure someone, he said, "This kind takes fasting and prayer."

Last Sunday our Holy Father called for a renewed sense of fasting in our church, in particular concerning peace in the Middle East. He asked us, invited all Catholics, to dedicate with special intensity next March 5^th, Wednesday, to pray and fast for the cause of peace, especially in the Middle East. I would encourage all of us to fast, all that can. Obviously some people cannot fast because of medical reasons. There are other works that they can do, if it’s only offering up their suffering as a great work of mercy. Perhaps you can miss lunches occasionally, spend that time in the chapel here. You know the secret combination, 134. Do some work instead of taking that lunch and gossiping about your boss, spend it in prayer and fasting. I know God will bless you. Our high school kids can fast too. They are old enough to pray with their bodies as well. Father Slotsko in Yugoslavia, in Medjugorie, wrote this, and I quote, "Fasting is the cry of our bodies seeking God. The cry of our innermost parts, our deepest deep, where in our extreme powerlessness, we encounter our vulnerability and our nothingness and throw ourselves totally into the abyss of God’s compassion."