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Prayer and Fasting

A Few Fasting Basics

There are several different kinds of fasting. You can stop eating certain kinds of foods (like meat), stop eating food entirely, or abstain from both food and water. Sometimes you might also give up other activities that give pleasure.

There can be medical reasons for fasting. When you go into a doctor’s office for tests, often you’ll be asked to fast for hours ahead of time. This fasting reveals things about your body that might otherwise be hidden, like diabetes.

Biologically, fasting is connected with grief. When we grieve, in addition to feeling emotional pain we may lose our appetite for a short or long period of time, and so we fast.

Prayer and Fasting

Fasting can also be done for spiritual reasons—one of which is to enhance our prayer. In fact, when we fast, it is important that we couple it with prayer and charity. The point isn’t to suffer; it is to bring us closer to God. For thousands of years going back to prehistory, fasting for spiritual reasons has been part of many religious traditions including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and more.

Prayer and Fasting

Fasting and Christianity

Before he began his public ministry, Jesus went into the desert for forty days as he fasted and prayed. After a lengthy and hard fast, it is not surprising that one of the temptations he faced was turning the stones around him into bread. The combination of fasting and prayer, however, was the cornerstone of his earthly ministry.

Jesus also told his disciples that there were some things that could only be done with “fasting and prayer.” He warned them, though, that the fasting that they did wasn’t meant for show; that it was meant (like some forms of prayer) to be private between themselves and God. Your prayerlife and fasting, whether it is physical (food) or something material.

The church incorporated fasting into various parts of the church year. Lent was modeled on those forty days that Christ fasted and prayed, and the combination of the two has been seen as a good way of preparing for the wonderful mysteries of Easter, for death and resurrection. To a lesser extent, Advent too was seen as a time of prayer and fasting in preparation for the Nativity and Christmas. During the regular year, Friday was often dedicated to fasting (at least from meat) and prayer.

Prayer and Fasting

The biological links of fasting and grief help us to pray with contrition for our sins, but it can have other physical effects, also. When you fast for religious reasons, for example, it might be difficult to concentrate.

Praying the rosary or using prayer beads can help you to focus by giving an order of prayer, providing some routine as well as something tactile.

Find the perfect rosary for you!

Prayer and Fasting can enhance your spirituality
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