Fasting and Reality

Let's be realistic about fasting, it makes you tetchy, even murderous!

Jesus was "driven" into desert to face hunger and temptation not for an intimate prayerful experience. if anything fasting makes the mental effort of prayer much more difficult.

I asked a wise old monk why Recreation was reduced to just half an hour during Lent in his monastery, "There are nice pious reasons about giving more time for prayer but the reality is it stops us from losing our temper and tearing out one another's throats". He said history is littered with monks who murdered their abbots during Lent.

Fasting sifts the soul leaving the chaff clearly visible, it shows what is really in the soul when pretending is no more.

We might like to pose like some beautifully dressed, bejeweled and masked Venetian lady during Carnivale but as soon as Ash Wednesday and the penance begins shows herself pockmarked and wrinkled stripped of pretense.

Fasting helps to reveal our true selves, to discover the beam in our own eye, it reveals the blindness that so often makes a good confession and open honest prayer impossible. .