QUOTATION: Fasting

We have to experience the profundity of not placing so much importance on the food with which we deprive ourselves as on the food that we make available to the hungry person through our privations. May our voluntary fast be what prevents so many involuntary fasts among the poor.  Let us choose to fast so that no one else is forced to.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Gesture of Solidarity, 2011

QUOTATION: To Fast is to Love

One who does not fast for the poor is cheating God. To fast is to love.  Our voluntary fasting should help prevent the obligatory fasts of the poor. Let us fast so that no one else is forced to.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Message, Ash Wednesday, 2009

QUOTATION: Fasting

 There is commandment laid on us to fast. For fasting helps to destroy sin, and to raise the mind to thoughts of the spiritual world. Each man is then bound, by the natural law of the matter, to fast just as much as is necessary to help him in these matters. Which is to say that fasting in general is a matter of natural law. To determine, however, when we shall fast and how, according to what suits and is of use to the Catholic body, is a matter of positive law. To state the positive law is the business of the bishops, and what is thus stated by them is called ecclesiastical fasting, in contradistinction with the natural fasting previously mentioned.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Fasting and Nourishment

Behold, my brethren, how much a fast can do, and in what manner the law commands us to fast. It is required that not only with the body should we fast, but with the soul. Now the soul is humbled when it does not follow wicked opinions, but feeds on becoming virtues. For virtues and vices are the food of the soul, and it can eat either of these two meats, and incline to either of the two, according to its own will. If it is bent toward virtue, it will be nourished by virtues, by righteousness, by temperance, by meekness, by fortitude, as Paul says; 'Being nourished by the word of truth (1 Timothy 4:6.)' Such was the case with our Lord, who said, 'My meat is to do the will of My Father which is in heaven (John 4:34.)' But if it is not thus with the soul, and it inclines downwards, it is then nourished by nothing but sin. For thus the Holy Ghost, describing sinners and their food, referred to the devil when He said, 'I have given him to be meat to the people of Æthiopia. ' For this is the food of sinners. And as our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being heavenly bread, is the food of the saints, according to this; 'Unless you eat My flesh, and drink My blood (John 6:53);' so is the devil the food of the impure, and of those who do nothing which is of the light, but work the deeds of darkness. Therefore, in order to withdraw and turn them from vices, He commands them to be nourished with the food of virtue; namely, humbleness of mind, lowliness to endure humiliations, the acknowledgment of God. For not only does such a fast as this obtain pardon for souls, but being kept holy, it prepares the saints, and raises them above the earth.

--St. Athanasius, Letter 1

QUOTATION: Mortification

Conquering the tongue is better than fasting on bread and water.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Prayer, Fasting, Mercy

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God's ear to yourself.

-- Saint Peter Chrysologus