Continuing our series on recent teachings of the Popes on the three-fold Lenten discipline of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, this week we take up an audience of St John Paul II from 1979, in which the Pope provides a reflection on fasting, one that may be prophetic of contemporary concerns about dependence on online media and the spiritual fruits of detachment from this “nourishment” that easily becomes excessive.
It is necessary to give this question [of fasting] a wider and deeper answer, in order to clarify the relationship between fasting and “metanoia”, that is, that spiritual change which brings man closer to God. We will try therefore to concentrate not only on the practice of abstention from food or from drink—that, in fact, is the meaning of “fasting” in the common sense—but on the deeper meaning of this practice which, moreover, can and must sometimes be “replaced” by another one. Food and drink are indispensable for man to live, he uses them and must use them, but he may not abuse them in any way. The traditional abstention from food and drink has as its purpose to introduce into man’s existence not only the necessary balance, but also detachment from what might be defined a “consumer attitude”. In our times this attitude has become one of the characteristics of civilization and in particular of Western civilization. … Man geared to material goods, multiple material goods, very often abuses them. It is not a question here lust of food and drink. When man is geared exclusively to possession and use of material goods— that is, of things—then also the whole civilization is measured according to the quantity and the quality of the things with which it is in a position to supply man, and is not measured with the yardstick suitable for man. This civilization, in fact, supplies material goods not just in order that they may serve man to carry out creative and useful activities, but more and more … to satisfy the senses, the excitement he derives from them, momentary pleasure, an ever greater multiplicity of sensations.
We sometimes hear it said that the excessive increase of audiovisual media in the rich countries is not always useful for the development of intelligence, particularly in children; on the contrary, it sometimes contributes to checking its development. The child lives only on sensations, he looks for ever-new sensations … And thus he becomes, without realizing it, a slave of this modern passion. Satiating himself with sensations, he often remains passive intellectually; the intellect does not open to search of truth; the will remains bound by habit which it is unable to oppose.
It is seen from this that modern man must fast, that is, abstain not only from food or drink, but from many other means of consumption, stimulation, satisfaction of the senses. To fast means to abstain, to renounce something. Why renounce something? Why deprive oneself of it? … [Our] answer will not be complete, if we do not realize that man is himself also because he succeeds in depriving himself of something, because he is capable of saying “no” to himself. […]
Renunciation of sensations, stimuli, pleasures and even food or drink, is not an end in itself. It must only, so to speak, prepare the way for deeper contents by which the interior man “is nourished”. This renunciation, this mortification must serve to create in man the conditions to be able to live the superior values, for which he, in his own way, hungers.
This is the “full” meaning of fasting in the language of today. However, when we read the Christian authors of antiquity or the Fathers of the Church, we find in them the same truth, often expressed in a surprisingly “modern” language. St Peter Chrysologus, for example, says.. “Fasting is peace of the body, strength of minds, vigour of souls” (Sermo VII: de jejunio 3); and again: “Fasting is the helm of human life and governs the whole ship of our body.” (Sermo VII: de jejunio 1)