Why Jesus Commands Us to Fast

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us that He expects us to fast because we love and want earthly things more than God, and that squeezes God out. I think it helps to see the importance of fasting in light of something else Jesus said. Luke tells us, great crowds accompanied Him on His way, and He turned and spoke to them, saying, “If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple…none of you can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions.” Luke 14: 25, 26, and 33.

Jesus is not saying that our relationships or possessions or health or work or good things of this world are evil and we have to get rid of them. They are gifts from God. He is saying that whatever we love or want most is what fills our heart. If that is anything less than God, we will never be happy. Nothing less than God can satisfy the human soul.

Identifying Disordered Attachments

We are supposed to pursue and possess good things like good health, good relationships, achievement through good work, knowledge, beauty, and so on. The problem begins when we look to one of these good things to give us what only God can give. We begin to seek our identity from our career. Our security from our savings. Our happiness from our spouse. Our worth from our achievements. Our peace from our health. Then these gifts quietly become idols.

How do we know when this has happened? Watch your reaction when one of these good things is threatened. Fear, sadness, and even anger are natural responses. They move us to protect what is good. But when our fear becomes overwhelming...when our anger controls us...when our sadness becomes despair...or when we cannot imagine being happy without that thing...those are signs that we have placed our ultimate hope somewhere other than God.

Suppose your career collapses. If your first thought is, "Now I don't know who I am," then your identity has become attached to your work. But your identity was never your career. It has always been that you are a beloved son or daughter of God.

The same can happen with marriage. Children. Health. Money. Freedom. Anything we cannot bear to lose may reveal where our heart has become attached.

Active Purification

To set us free from our idols, from our disordered attachment to good things, Jesus tells us to fast. “When you fast do not put on a gloomy look as the hypocrites do…and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.” Mt 6:16-18

Fasting is training. We voluntarily deny ourselves some good thing, not because it is bad, but because we do not want to become dependent upon it for what only God can give.

Every act of self-denial says, "God, I want You more." Little by little our love is reordered. Our dependence on created things decreases. Our dependence on God increases. John of the Cross calls this the active purification. It is our cooperation with God's grace to put our loves back into their proper order: God first, everything else second.

Passive Purification

Our fasting and self-denial are necessary. But it is not enough. We cannot completely free ourselves. So God completes the work. Sometimes He permits us to lose the very things to which we have become attached. Not because He is punishing us. But because He is preparing us for Himself. Something happens that we did not choose, do not like, and cannot change. Our health fails. A relationship changes. Our plans collapse. Our work disappears.

At first we experience fear, anger, or sadness. Then faith reminds us: God is a perfect Father. He is not taking something away because He loves us less. He is freeing us so that nothing prevents us from possessing Him completely.

John of the Cross puts it beautifully, “It was sheer grace to be placed by God in this night that occasioned so much good. The soul would not have succeeded in entering it, because souls are unable alone to empty themselves of all the things they want more than God in order to reach God.”

John calls this passive purification. This is God's work. Our part is to trust Him. To accept what we cannot change. To believe that He is preparing us for transforming union with Himself.

Where to start?

Jesus commands us to fast so we can be filled by God. Mary continually comes to ask us to fast, especially on bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays. Fasting from food trains the mind, body, and soul not to love or need earthly things more than God. We should fast in some way from food and drink. But I think the current biggest addiction that plagues us is our addiction to screens.

We live in gluttony to our phones, news, an overload of information, entertainment, sports, and social media. We need to fast from this! And replace it with what we really need. Friendship with God and with others.

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