Lent 2026 Day 3: Rediscover Authentic Fasting
Lent is built on the tripod of ascetic and penitential observance – prayer, fasting and almsgiving or charity towards the needy.
Today’s gospel illuminates the discipline of fasting. The disciples of John, who was very strict in his diet of locusts and honey, were bewildered that the disciples of the Lord Jesus seemed to be casual when it came to fasting. Jesus had to clarify that his followers were not against fasting, nor did they abandon it; they just discovered a more profound meaning of fasting.
We Christians, and Catholics specially, have lost the art of religious fasting, which did not only mean foregoing food, but also avoiding meat (meat symbolizes things which were pleasurable, luxurious, and capricious). Wellness programs have intermittent fasting, water fasting, cleansing fasting, and others, meant for regaining health and physical equilibrium.
But religious fasting is different. I once read that fasting, for the sake of one’s faith, has the following characteristics: It is offered to the Lord; it considers the hunger that fasting results in as a teacher that brings spiritual lessons; It is not concerned about the beauty or wellbeing of the body, but is centered on the soul. Secular fasting rather tends towards self-improvement, mastery over hunger, and improvement of the body and its faculties.
Isaiah lays down the effects of religious fasting that God expects from us, his children: being concerned for our neighbor, especially the hungry and the poor who we encounter in their nakedness and in their need.
This Lent, let us ask the Lord for the courage to fast and abstain from food and pleasure, and by this practice to grow in concern for others and in genuine desire to help those in need around us. And if we find ourselves incapable of helping others materially or financially, may we be at least a listener, a volunteer, an advocate to those who need a friend, an ally, and a fellow traveler on the road of life.
