JV Lent: Fasting

“Is this the manner of fasting I would choose, a day to afflict oneself? To bow one's head like a reed and lie upon sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you calla  fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke? Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry, bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house; Clothing the naked when you see them and not turning your back on your own flesh?” Isaiah 58:5-7

American Catholic fasting is the easiest fasting. Give up something for the 40 days of Lent, and don't eat meat on Fridays. Also on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday you eat very little (or nothing if you're hardcore). Even people who do juice cleanses do a more intense fast.

I can't tell you about Peruvian Catholic fasting. I can tell you about Andean fasting – it's not a thing. It might seem scandalous to American Catholics who have haddock instead of steak on Lenten Fridays to hear that Peruvian Catholics will all manner of dishes that involve meat. But the real scandal is that what Andean people eat for lunch most days of the year is what American Catholics eat for Fridays in Lent. Operation Rice Bowl encourages American Catholics to make a recipe from a different poor area of the world each Lenten Friday. Andean people don't fast, and the church doesn't encourage them to, because by American standards they are fasting every day.

So, Benjamin, American Catholic trying to live in solidarity with Peruvian Catholics, are you fasting this Lent?

Not like I do in America. For starters I'm not going to abstain from meat from Fridays. I'm not going to cook meat on Fridays because I never cook meat because we never buy it. But I'm not going to refuse a plate of food because there's small chunks of steak in it. Refusing a plate of food from the comedor because of some meat would go against the Simple Living value, not to mention show an impressive level of ingratitude. Fasting should make us more grateful, not less.

The fast Isaiah calls us to is not a fast from the pleasures of food, but a fast from the pleasures of injustice. The pleasures of injustice are everywhere: in cheap products from companies that don't pay fair wages, in speedy transit that pollutes the environment, in saying you don't have enough to donate generously to charity but having enough to spend $35 on a plate of food* at a nice restaurant. Isaiah isn't calling us to asceticism and self-denial. He's calling us to fullness and other-affirmation.

I'll try to skip dinners on Fridays to keep the topic of fasting fresh in my mind this Lent. But my fasting focus will be on Isaiah's style of fasting rather than meatless Fridays.

What is your practice of fasting this Lent?

*$35 converts to about S/.105, which can pay for 21 lunches for one person. Just sayin.