Fasting

Ever wondered why Jesus fasted? Or Moses? Or Elisha? Or Catholics during Lent? Sharing with you here an image shared to me in FB.


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Is fasting really necessary? For us Catholics it is. We are required to fast on 2 particular days of the year. This is during the season of Lent. One is on Ash Wednesday and the other one is on Good Friday. On all the other Fridays of Lent, we are required to abstain from eating meat (abstinence). To what end? What does fasting hope to achieve? The Bible has numerous stories of people fasting to show repentance to the Lord, express humility before Him, and prove their love and loyalty to Him.

Fasting is a form of self mortification. We deny ourselves of worldly things that bring pleasure and satisfaction to us for the purpose of bringing us closer to God. It is a sacrifice that can lift up our spirituality because our focus shifts from ourselves and the world around us to God and our hearts and souls.

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Fasting can also be considered as a prayer asking for forgiveness and can also be offered up for the sins of others. Moses offered his second 40 days fasting for the sins of his people so God will forgive them and not wipe them out for worshipping the golden calf. (Deuteronomy 9: 14-18).

Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights in the desert in preparation for His ministry. The temptation He underwent during this time only served to strengthen Him for His mission here on earth.

During those forty days, when Jesus’ flesh was at its weakest, He endured relentless temptation from Satan. Satan offered Him alternatives to God’s plan, compromises that would satisfy His natural desires, and attacks upon His very identity as the Son of God (Matthew 4:3). Jesus used the Word of God, not His own strength, to defeat those temptations and remain victorious over sin. He demonstrated for us that fasting can strengthen us spiritually when we use it to draw closer to God.

Fasting actually is encouraged not only during Lent but throughout the whole year. Fasting need not only focus on food, but can be about anything that anyone finds hard to give up. It can be smoking, drinking, uttering profanities, gossiping, and so many more.

The whole point of it is by momentarily depriving one's self of these pleasures we deepen our spiritual lives as we offer the inconvenience or the discomfort to God as atonement for one's sins or for the sins of others, or as form of offering in gratitude for blessings receive. It is also our hope that through fasting we may strenghten our wills to say no to the things that oppose God's will for us. In our world today, it can be a hard thing to say no to many things because we are prone to saying yes most of the time and sometimes all of the time. This is what spoiled brats are all about having what thay want and when they want it. A little inconvenience or suffering gives them a lot of discomfort and pain they will holler and break into a tantrum quite easily.
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People do not lack strength; they lack will. – Victor Hugo

All images sourced from Pixabay unless specified otherwise.

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