What I learned from a year of fasting
"God, thank you for the nourishment you provide when food is unavailable ..."
On Ash Wednesday, March 6, 2019, I started a fasting process where once a week I would fast from everything except water from one meal on a particular day to the same meal the next day. This culminated in a 60-hour fast from Holy Thursday evening to Easter morning this year. Previously, I had been fasting 24-36 hours, but had never done it weekly for more than a couple of months. The decision to do so was not in response to a significant event in my life or in search of particular insights or grace; it just seemed to be what God asked me. I didn't know it was going to be the busiest year of my life.
Yet whatever was going on, every week I found myself returning to a simple prayer that started and ended almost all fasts. "God, thank you for the nourishment you provide when there is no food available, and thank you for the food you provide that feeds me." Simple in words and time, it became the phrase that clearly marked the beginning and end of about 60 days without food.
Below are some entries from my fasting diary that highlighted the messages that kept repeating themselves, those that seemed to embody what I should have learned from this particular research. The last entry details a personal story and the honest and humiliating admission it brought me.
The blessing of food is easily overwhelmed by its necessity. Although we all have the potential to use food as an unhealthy therapeutic agent and a substitute for God, it is obvious (but worth remembering) that the gift of food is much more than a calorie product designed to fill a physical void (even if my father-in-law might have argued differently). Food and drinks come to us in moments of celebration, in moments of joy, in moments of uncertainty, in moments of contemplation and in moments of true despair. Since the beginning of time, the consumption that mysteriously supplies all the systems of our body and mind also fills our soul. To say that it is the lifeblood of people is even a euphemism [in e] of itself.
Yet while my fast inaugurates a celebration of all that food, it also hints at an even more important admonition. There is nothing wrong with looking for food or other healthy pleasures when you want instant positivity. But it is dependence on it, and independence from Him in these times, that I would say is making this fast so necessary for me. I can rationalize that the gift of God provides a reflection of Him, and on this I can stand on quite solid ground. But I cannot argue that it is a substitute of equal proportion or of the same potential. Because if in those moments of rumbling, my needs always seek it first without feeling like I had given up a little instant joy, then I realize that what I am really looking for is the relationship that food cannot provide, but that what is the Living Bread. I hope to be lucky enough to live a life where good food is always available, especially when it fills up and you feel better. But even more, I hope it remains a luxurious gift that does not replace the love it can offer.
A [fasting lesson] involves an intrinsic challenge easily lost in the obligation that has been assumed. Under the penitential sacrifice, under the desire to see what lies beyond the ready pleasures of a typical day, a challenge arises that seems rather divine, but [is] very simple in nature. The challenge I continue to feel is not if I am able to support this commitment for the year of fasting, but rather if I am able to be happy in the process of doing it. Just as Jesus said he was not like the Pharisees who groan publicly during their religious sacrifices, I personally find myself challenged to consider not only where I will find a ready source of pleasure when the food is finished, but more importantly, just how it will keep a sense of great joy while fasting is taking place. Discipline is the heart of our faith, but discipline without joy seems to be missing the point. And so, this challenge grows even when my appetite increases.
It had been a week or more. The previous week, about an hour after Memorial Day began, our beloved grandfather Schroeder died at the age of 86. As a Korean War veteran, we thought it was right to "hang on" to this day after a number of previous fears that could easily have led to his [previous] death. But as with his life, he had persisted as long as his body seemed to allow it. She had lived an extraordinary life and part of what made her so was the simplicity with which she went on. As I noticed in my praise to him, between lessons of love, commitment, loyalty and determination, he taught me 2 things: life is fun and life is hard, and neither exists in isolation. As the oldest grandson, I have had over 40 years of significant experiences with him that have left me and our family with an incredible love legacy. We said goodbye on June 5 when he was buried with military honors in St. Joseph's cemetery, about a kilometer from where he and my grandmother lived most of their 66 years together.
This morning, when my fast began, I found myself thinking a lot about him and his companions. It was the 75th anniversary of D-Day and all over the world people celebrated the incredible sacrifice made by many young men to preserve the freedom of this country and other parts of the world. Ever since grandfather had passed, I couldn't help thinking about the stark contrast between the world I grew up with and what he was with. When he and his brothers barely joined the Navy from high school, they did so without any certainty of where he would take them. Growing up in a poor working family, they learned that every meal required hard work and the only guarantee was that in order to survive, this work had to continue. Eighty years later, my children have no idea what it means.
As my fasting continued, I found myself reading bits and pieces of an article about Ernie Pyle, the famous World War II correspondent who first gave an honest account of the horrors of this war to end all wars. With a first-person view of D-Day, he talked about walking on the beaches after the invasion in which the carnage of the war was on display. As waves and waves of men came ashore, many of which could not even land, the courage on display was only overwhelmed by its sheer brutality. In seeing the photos of these men as they prepared to enter the jaws of death, I could not help but see myself in them. Various faces of different experiences are all catapulted into the teeth of this gigantic conflict; I wondered what I would do. Even if I had survived, what would I have done with the horror of that day for years and decades to come? The pride inside me likes to say that I would continue with strength; the truth is that I'm just grateful that I didn't even know; the cowardice in me says it scares me to even think that I am where these men went.