Is fasting essential? Why isn't it done much today?

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Is fasting essential? Why isn’t it done much today (the church has greatly reduced it’s rules on fasting)?
 
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I Would say fasting is essential for a full Christian life. Fasting allows us to master our desires - Saying no to small things now helps us in saying no to mortal sin later.
Our culture views self-denial and restraint as enslavement, when really they set us free from our desires. I would say that’s why it’s not done much today.
 
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says…

"When you fast,
do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
They neglect their appearance,
so that they may appear to others to be fasting.
Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face,
so that you may not appear to be fasting,
except to your Father who is hidden.
And your Father who sees what is hidden will repay you."

Notice that Jesus says, WHEN you fast, not IF you fast. I’d say it is essential and should be practiced more.
 
We have become a squishy, lazy “what is the minimum I can do” sort of society.
 
Actually, I think a lot of people still fast to a significant degree. I know it’s popular to say “people are just a bunch of lazy, undisciplined gluttons”. While it’s true that we here in the First World have way more to eat than third world people, and some folks probably do lack discipline, I don’t think it’s that simple. (It would be like assuming everyone you see who is overweight is eating too much - some people are overeating, but others are eating the wrong types of food, or even eating too little at many meals, which can itself contribute to a weight problem.)

There are a few problems with stressing fasting in today’s society, including:
  1. Fasting used to have the practical purpose of conserving food within a community, especially so that everybody could make it through the last stages of winter (hence the long fast time of Lent). Today, first world countries don’t have this issue. People going without food also doesn’t help make sure that a hungry person has food to eat.
  2. Fasting in today’s society is often associated with weight loss, fitness, or other issues relating more to vanity or worldly concerns rather than holiness. At worst, a fasting person might have an eating disorder, which is not holiness but is a life-threatening psychological condition.
  3. Holding up fasting as virtuous runs counter to the fact that a subset of people in society have food insecurity. While very few people in USA are starving in the street, a percentage of them are hungry on a regular basis. If fasting was held up as a virtue, it would remove motivation to help these people. Unless perhaps you were going to not eat your own lunch and instead hand it directly to a hungry person, which can be done by skipping a meal and donating its cost (and people often do that) but can’t usually be done directly (you can’t find a poor person and hand them your lunch plate).
  4. People’s learning and livelihood today often involves staying nourished and focused. If you’re hungry, you can’t concentrate on learning or brain work. You also are putting yourself and probably others at risk if you are trying to drive or operate heavy machinery while very hungry. You could make a mistake or pass out. Many, though not all, of the saints who fasted a lot in previous eras were not doing much more than praying in their cell. They certainly weren’t driving on a highway or working on an assembly line.
  5. As discussed in other threads, the focus has shifted away from having people “give something up” without fully doing it in a spirit of penance or really understanding why they’re doing it, to instead concentrating on getting them to build a relationship with God that would put into perspective things like fasting or going without TV or Internet, etc.
This is not to say people can’t do a short fast of a day or two, or fast by giving up desserts, TV, etc for a period of time, but I can see why it isn’t emphasized so much today.
 
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Christphr said:
Is fasting essential? Why isn’t it done much today (the church has greatly reduced it’s rules on fasting)?
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Just a heads up. Fasting isn’t necessarily as horrible as you might think, and I don’t think it should be. A priest I respect told me two small snacks and one full meal. That is what I am doing today for ash Wednesday.
 
FrancisPio said:
A priest I respect told me two small snacks and one full meal.
Click to expand...
That’s actually how a lot of people eat pretty much every day for one reason or another.
It’s not really a fast unless you were eating three full meals to begin with.
Many people for example never eat breakfast or just have some little snack that they can grab quickly.
 
Also fasting can tempt us to self righteousness and a sense of entitlement. “I fasted so God should favor me.”
 
Yeah. I think in general, any person making a big deal out of how little they ate, whether it’s for God or for a diet or because they just claim not to be hungry, is annoying to other people.
It can be “virtue signaling” in the most blatant way.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
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FrancisPio:
A priest I respect told me two small snacks and one full meal.
Click to expand...
That’s actually how a lot of people eat pretty much every day for one reason or another.
It’s not really a fast unless you were eating three full meals to begin with.
Many people for example never eat breakfast or just have some little snack that they can grab quickly.
Click to expand...
Sure but not most americans. We could bring up diabetic meal plans and the difference in necessary eating habits for one who works in an office chair and one who works hard laboring outside but best to keep it simple.
 
Exactly why we have the Scriptures that say when we fast, we should not walk around all sad faced and we should shine the shoes and put on some lipstick (that is from the super me translation).
 
Jesus said in response to the question by the Pharisees about why His disciples were not fasting…

net 'not while the bridegroom is still with them…‘but on that day they will fast (Friday)’

as a good priest I know said about fasting…“never fast alone…we fast with Jesus…we let our body remind us to talk with Jesus more”.

That’s one of the goals of fasting, closer unity with God.
 
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