7/13/2019 Review to Dag Tessore's Book "Fasting"

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'The Tablet 20 October 2007

Review on Dag Tessores book Fasting

(New it!" #$" 2007%

b! hristo&her owse" assistant eitor o) The Dail! Telegra&h*

+bstinence in the age o) the eating isorer

In a fast of, say, five days, "normally after a day or two the stomach crampscease, as does the feeling of hunger", yet it remains "tiring and difficult: everyhour that passes without eating is an interior battle". That is the experience of

Dag Tessore, no desert stylite, but a married man and father, who is convinced ofthe physical and spiritual benefits of a total and prolonged fast.

The important intention of his little book, however, is to reintroduce the idea ofascetical fasting on a more modest and regular scale. It has, he argues through awide survey of patristic sources, dwindled unnecessarily in the estern !atholic!hurch, although the astern !hurches have in theory retained the ancientdiscipline.

The author is wary of the twin dangers of formalism. # fast can be without virtue."$ou fast," says %t &erome, "but perhaps you lose your temper' another person

eats, butis perhaps kind and gentle." (n the other hand, the obligation to fast can becircumvented by canonical shifts. )oor )ope *enedict +I complained in the-/0s that "the most sacred observance of the 1enten fast, through theexcessive and indiscriminate granting of dispensations everywhere, for futile andnot urgent reasons, has been almost entirely eliminated."

If, though, we have left off other customs of life from the times of the !hurch2athers, why bother to fast3 2asting is a natural expression of mourning, Tessoreargues, and so, like 4oses in Deuteronomy 56:-78, if we see 9od offended,fasting is a proper response.

*eyond that, as %t #mbrose asserted, fasting shows humilitas mentis, alowliness of mind, which Tessore explains by the "feeling of hunger, suffering andtiredness" being "translated automatically on the psychological level, into anattitude of humility and sincere repentance".

%t *asil said that repentance without fasting was useless. It is an earnest ofrepentance, like any other penance. %t #mbrose characterised it as a "sacrifice of

7/13/2019 Review to Dag Tessore's Book "Fasting"

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reconciliation" with 9od. ven in the (ld Testament, the notion of fasting for thebenefit of someone else was recognised. sther asks the &ews in exile to "hold afast on my behalf".

That is not to euate fasting with self;punishment, nor food with evil. !hristians

were never 4anichees, and always blessed their food before they ate it. In anintroduction to the book, !anon oined by the !hurch. 2irst, they were communitarian,so that meatless 2ridays were an identifying and uniting badge. %econdly, theyundermined individual food fads. hen, in the astern tradition, six foods were

eschewed in 1ent 5meat, fish, dairy products, eggs, wine and oil8, this made themdesirable at other times.

*ut it is useless to over;rationalise cultural practices. !arthusians are vegetarian,but we know that &esus was not. ?e shared the paschal lamb like any good &ew,and with great significance. It is notable that &esus= fast for /0 days matched thatof the forerunners who >oined him on the mountain of the Transfiguration: 4osesand li>ah. #s for what he taught about fasting, it is on the interior rather than theformal level: "ash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others butby your 2ather who is in secret."

*ut &esus did not tell us not to fast. 2asting was part of the liturgical pattern fromthe earliest times. The Didache, one of the earliest !hristian documents outsidethe oined a fast on ednesdays and 2ridays. Details differedbetween ast and est, and Irenaeus in the second century, and later #mbrosein the fourth, wisely counselled observance of the local custom.

In passing, there is a crux on one page where reference is made to a thirteenth;century fast;day habit "of eating granite and other similar foods". # footnoterenders this as "a grain;textured, flavoured water;ice". It is a charming idea, butis not a grainy porridge meant3

%o what is to be done today, when it scarcely occurs to many !atholics to fast,except to slim or for reasons of health3 Tessore favours a simple diet of naturalfoodstuffs, which agrees with current received opinion. *ut he lives in 9reece,where a local rural diet fitsthe bill. In urban *ritain, it can be a greater penance to eat sliced bread, ratherthan more expensive, delicious artisanal loaves. In 4exico, the poor do not eatbread at all, but beans or mai@e tortillas. %o the benefits of fasting must comefrom the spirit, not a Tessore diet.

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%ince !atholics remain under an obligation to perform some act of penance each2riday, in memory and solidarity with &esus !hrist and his still suffering 4ystical*ody, they might visit the sick or prisoners. (r perhaps Tessore is right and aspot of fasting or abstinence is no bad idea.

hristo&her owse

+bstract an ,ne- o) the book.htt&.//agtessoreenglish*blogs&ot*co1/&/christian)astingcittanovaro1e*ht1l

3here to b! this book.

htt&.//www*cenacle*co*k/&rocts*as&4&artno56809:*;6gi