I usually have to drink milk or juice, something that has at least a few calories in it. It’s one of the few ways I get enough during the day when I’m having trouble with solid food.
Yes it does. The ecclesiastical definition of fasting is the reduction or omission of food. These are properly termed abstinence, and are praiseworthy things.
I’m always confused when people say this. Most of the time around here the pastors barely have time to deal with little things like that.
There is no obligation to talk to “your spiritual director” before you fast from TV for 24 hours. Nor if you want to fast from complaining.
I’m simply trying to put together a day or two as a spiritual “recharge” time.There is no obligation to talk to “your spiritual director” before you fast from TV for 24 hours. Nor if you want to fast from complaining.
I can’t imagine that any priest has time to talk to everyone that gives up soda for a week.
Now, if you plan on fasting from food for 40 days, then you want to talk to someone first.
This is a basic principle when it comes to voluntary penances. It was always a sound principle that whenever one wanted to take on a voluntary penance beyond what the Church required, always to do so with the advice of one’s pastor or spiritual director.
What Pope Paul VI wrote in 1966 elucidates the forms of penitence:
Having said that, the USCCB also notes: *Those that are excused from fast and abstinence outside the age limits include the physically or mentally ill including individuals suffering from chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Also excluded are pregnant or nursing women. In all cases, common sense should prevail, and ill persons should not further jeopardize their health by fasting. *
Honestly I just don’t want to be seen as a kid who needs to run to the pastor for approval for everything, especially since I haven’t and won’t be at a parish for long. From what I’ve seen most pastors won’t consider short penances that are not terribly severe to be something that needs managing. If I were thinking of a month or two perhaps, but for a weekend it seems unnecessary to go to the pastor in a rather underserved area for such.
This sort of thing is always interesting. By my location, I have quite a low standard of living. I live in a tiny little cheap apartment with lots of spiders and no air conditioning. I don’t possess a car, let alone fancy things like a TV. I have chronic health problems and live in part on a combination of public aid and help from friends. Yet I also recognize that for many parts of the world my own lifestyle would be luxurious. I have a roof that doesn’t leak, I can get my medications every month, I have clean water when I turn the tap on. Those are things many parts of the world don’t have.
With regards to physical penances, the physician taking care of you for your chronic health issue is probably the most capable of giving you answers that reflect a deeper understanding of your condition. After all, the best (and perhaps the hardest) penance for you might be the practice of being a very compliant patient.
There’s not much to that one unfortunately, when all the doctors have managed to say is “Well try to eat more?”
I didn’t mean I thought it made you a little kid. But I did mean what I’ve seen in a lot of cases is that most priests view someone who keeps running to them on such things as someone who needs to take more responsibility for themselves and not keep seeking approval for their decisions.
“Try to eat more” = “No fasting from food for you”
Yes. If you ask your pastor what to do when the rules of abstinence require you to fast and your doctors tell you that you may not fast, your pastor is simply going to tell you that you are to obey your physicians and find a different penance. They won’t mind you asking, but they also won’t mind that you take it upon yourself to follow the rules posted on the web by the USCCB. The USCCB doesn’t say the faithful ought to get a dispensation. The USSCB says the faithful whose health forbids fasting should not fast.
I get you–no, if your doctor tells you not to fast, you are not required to go to your pastor for dispensation from the fast. Other forms of spiritual self-discipline include self-denial meant as penance (rather than meant as self-improvement, like bodybuilding), with a preference given to those things that are ingrained habits, almsgiving (which is just about anything done in love for someone in need), and prayer.
