The Fast I Choose
Austin Stevenson
Having grown up in a non-liturgical tradition that practiced neither Lent nor fasting, I always enjoy learning more about the nature of the liturgical practices that I have come to love since becoming Anglican. For those of us fasting—either from food, or from things like social media, alcohol, or Zoom (I wish!)—I thought it might be helpful to consider what my favorite theologian, Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274), has to say about fasting. He discusses the topic in various biblical commentaries and devotes a question of his Summa Theologiae to the topic (ST II-II, q. 147).
Aquinas argues that fasting is an act of virtue, because it is directed by right reason to a virtuous good. In fact, multiple virtuous goods, including the fact that fasting cools our lust for physical things and aids our mind in rising more freely to spiritual things. However, he notes that ‘an act that is virtuous generically may be rendered vicious by its connection with certain circumstances’. Here, he reminds us that the value of the act of fasting is derived from the reason for which it is undertaken. Hence the admonitions in Scripture to fast in private (Matthew 6:18), for when the end of our fasting is turned to vanity, it becomes an act of vice. The virtue, of which fasting is an act, is that of abstinence. And while, properly speaking, fasting is abstinence from food, it is also suitably said to be an abstinence from all manner of lust (which is why it is acceptable to fast from Twitter instead of food, if that is what most inordinately captures our attention and desire).
Thomas also notes that ‘right reason does not retrench so much from one’s food as to render them incapable of fulfilling their duty’. To fail to act in accord with virtue because we are “hangry” is, it seems, to undermine the purpose of our fasting. Our abstinence is not a fitting excuse for a short temper, and we do better to break our fast in order to act with kindness than to act out of anger to keep it. Importantly, Aquinas notes that ‘fasting is instituted by the Church in order to bridle concupiscence, yet so as to safeguard nature’. The goods of fasting should not be sought at the expense of the health of our bodies. (This is why fasting from sleep is not generally advisable, given what we now know of the significant and largely irreversible effects of sleep deprivation on the human body).
For those who like numbers, Aquinas notes that there are thirty-six fast days during the forty days of Lent. Roughly one tenth of the year—an annual tithe of our days to God.
In short, Aquinas’s hope for us is that our season of fasting might be directed by right reason toward the good and draw us closer to God through the restraint and instruction of our attention and desires.
