LENTEN FASTING

 LENTEN FASTING




Dom Prosper Gueranger tells us that,
“For several centuries, abstinence from flesh-meat included likewise the prohibition of all animal food, with the single exception of fish, which, on account of its cold nature, as also for several mystical reasons, founded on the Sacred Scriptures, was always permitted to be taken by those who fasted. Every sort of milk-meat was forbidden.” (1)
The particular fasting period we are undergoing at this time is a preparatory one which, we pray, will assist us in overcoming our weaknesses and which we can direct towards a higher purpose, a fast which was inherited from the Jewish practices, devolving from the Apostles:
“The Apostles, therefore, legislated for our weakness, by instituting, at the very commencement of the Christian Church, that the solemnity of Easter should be preceded by a universal fast; and it was only natural that they should have made this period of penance to consist of forty days, seeing that our Divine Master had consecrated that number by His own fast. St Jerome, St Leo the Great, St Cyril of Alexandria, St Isidore of Seville and others of the Holy Fathers, assure us that Lent was instituted by the Apostles, although at the commencement, there was not a uniform way of observing it.” (2)
Lenten fasting can be difficult. Dom Prosper observed:
“Lent, then, is a time consecrated in an especial manner to penance; and this penance is mainly practised by fasting. Fasting is an abstinence which man voluntarily imposes upon himself as an expiation for sin, and which, during Lent, is practised in obedience to the general law of the Church. According to the actual discipline of the western Church, the fast of Lent is not more rigorous than that prescribed for the vigils of certain feasts, and for the Ember Days; but it is kept up for forty successive days, with the single interruption of the intervening Sundays.” (3)
(1) Dom Prosper Gueranger, “The Liturgical Year, Volume V, Lent” Loreto Publications, AD 2013, at p. 9.
(2) ibid., at p. 2.
(3) ibid., at p. 3.

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