Tag: fasting

Easter: The Great Sunday

Easter is not just "Easter Day," it is the fifty days from Easter Day until the Day of Pentecost. Easter is, so to speak, the "Sunday season". Every day of the Easter week is liturgically like a Sunday, and is of a similar rank as Easter. The following days are a further extension of Easter: the Sundays following Easter, often wrongly called "First Sunday after Easter," "Second Sunday after Easter," or (better) "Second Sunday of Eastertime" etc., are rightly called "Second Sunday of Easter", "Third Sunday of Easter" etc.

All the 7 weeks of Easter (a week of weeks) preserve an Easter and Sunday character. These fifty days, approximately a seventh of the year, make up a great "Sunday" in the yearly cycle.

The season of Easter has always been a time of joy and celebration. The Council of Nicaea, to favor this spirit of joy and celebration, even forbade fasting and kneeling during the fifty days of Easter.

This keeping of Easter as an extended celebration of the Resurrection has unfortunately been very much lost. I was struck today reading a pastoral letter of Bishop Conlon, of the diocese of Steubenville, inviting the Catholics of the diocese to resume the practice of abstaining from meat on Friday, and stating "The resumption of year-round abstinence in the Diocese of Steubenville will begin after this coming Easter, one week after Good Friday (April 17)." Of course this is certainly a good practice, but in fact, he chose the most inappropriate day possible to begin it. The Code of Canon Law, which in general preserves the law of abstinence on Fridays (though permitting the conferences of bishops to substitute other forms of penance), states that "abstinence from eating meat" is to be observed on Fridays unless they are solemnities. Easter Friday is a solemnity, indeed the greatest solemnity of the year that occurs on Friday. So this would not traditionally have been, nor according to the Code of Canon Law be a day of abstinence. The particular point about the starting date for beginning the practice is a small one, perhaps, but does seem to point to a certain regrettable lack of liturgical understanding.

On Fasting

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis de Sales, and Pope Benedict XVI on fasting.

Aquinas – Is fasting a virtue?

An action is virtuous due to its being directed by reason to a noble good. And this is true of fasting. For we fast for three purposes: (1) to restrain the desires of the flesh; (2) to raise the mind to contemplate sublime things; (3) to make satisfaction for our sins. These are good and noble things, and so fasting is virtuous.

More from Aquinas on fasting

Francis de Sales – benefit of fasting

If you are able to fast, you will do well to observe some days beyond what are ordered by the Church, for besides the ordinary effect of fasting in raising the mind, subduing the flesh, confirming goodness, and obtaining a heavenly reward, it is also a great matter to be able to control greediness, and to keep the sensual appetites and the whole body subject to the law of the Spirit; and although we may be able to do but little, the enemy nevertheless stands more in awe of those whom he knows can fast.

More from Francis de Sales on fasting

Pope Benedict XVI

Fasting represents an important ascetical practice, a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves. Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person…. The ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us to make a complete gift of self to God. May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass.

More from Pope Benedict XVI on fasting