Fasting

“The season of humiliation which precedes Easter lasts for forty days in memory of our Lord’s long fast in the wilderness. We fast by way of penitence and to subdue the flesh. Our Savior had no need of fasting for either purpose. His fasting was unlike ours, as in its intensity, so in its object. And yet when we begin to fast, his pattern is set before us, and we continue the time of fasting till in number of days we have equaled his.

There is a reason for this: we must do nothing except with him in our eye. As he it is, through whom alone we have the power to do any good thing, so unless we do it for him it is not good. From him our obedience comes, towards him it must look. He says, ‘apart from me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15:5). No work is good without grace and without love.

Even in our penitential exercises, Christ has gone before us to sanctify them to us. He has blessed fasting as a means of grace, in that he has fasted, and fasting is only acceptable when it is done for his sake. Penitence is mere formality, or mere remorse, unless done in love. If we fast without uniting ourselves in heart to Christ, imitating him, and praying that he would make our fasting his own and communicate to it the virtue of his own, then we beat the air and humble ourselves in vain.

...Let us keep close under the wings of the Almighty that he may be our shield and buckler. Let us pray to him to make known to us his will, to teach us our faults, to take away whatever may offend him, and to lead us in the way of everlasting. And during this sacred season, let us look upon ourselves as being on the mount with him, within the veil, hid with him, not out of him or apart from him in whose presence alone is life, but with and in him, learning of his law with Moses and of his attributes with Elijah and of his counsels with Daniel, learning to repent, learning to confess and to amend, learning his love and his fear, unlearning ourselves and growing up unto him who is our head.”

~St. John Henry Newman