Friday after Ash Wednesday

Readings of the Day

One of our traditional Lenten practices, fasting, has been adapted by those who seek to lose and maintain weight. “Intermittent fasting,” popular among celebrities, social media influencers, fashionistas (and even some clergy!) requires that a person eat only one meal within a specified time frame and refrain from eating for the rest of the day or evening. This kind of fasting is distinguished from our more familiar Lenten fast in which the motivation is to “grow closer to God.” Regardless of motivation, those who fast for physical reasons and those who fast for spiritual reasons do so with a transactional mindset: that by fasting one will get something in return. This transactional attitude is precisely what Isaiah addressed in the first reading.

Isaiah proclaimed, “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them…” Isaiah suggested that fasting be rooted in the experience of those who

involuntarily fast every day: the prisoner, the starving, the homeless and the naked. Imagine applying Isaiah’s criteria of fasting in a context in which the top 20% own nearly 90% of the nation’s wealth and where nearly 22% of the world's prisoners are incarcerated and 1 out 6 children are born into poverty. How can we ignore Isaiah’s words? How can we not be impassioned to act in the face of budget proposals that would cut social services to the neediest at a time when the top 1% increased their wealth by $21 trillion between 1989-2018? What kind of fasting, then, would be most appropriate? “Other-Directed Fasting.”

Other-Directed Fasting is not transactional in which we “get” something from fasting, but rather, a fasting that binds us more intimately to others around us by making us more acutely aware of those who involuntarily fast every day. When we are other-directed in fasting, we look outwards before we begin our fast. We listen to the stories of those who live in vehicles and along the creek beds or in garages or tool sheds in a back yard. We become attuned to the 40 million in our country alone who do not have luxury of choosing when to eat. Their reality tells us what our Lenten fast should look like. 

Choosing to practice other-directed fasting will remind us that our neighbor is also fasting because her fast is tied to a decision she must make between eating or getting a prescription filled, paying for utilities or making rent. Other-directed fasting allows Spirit to communicate to us in our physical hunger by viscerally connecting us to the condition of others. Other-directed fasting ultimately sensitizes us to check our privilege (of having the choice to fast) and invites us to step back so that those directly affected by poverty and hunger rise can up themselves and break the yoke of injustice. Our task becomes witnessing the emergence of self-determination and accompanying our sisters and brothers in the journey.

And with this we pray: May our Lenten fast be rooted in the gospel call for social transformation in which the hungry have bread, the oppressed are freed, and the homeless and naked are clothed and welcomed home.

Fr. Jon Pedigo, STL is the Director of Advocacy and Community Engagement Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County. Fr. Pedigo is a 2012 Rockwood Fellow for Immigrant Leaders in California and a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum (ALF).  He holds a Bachelor of Music Degree from San Francisco State University and a Master of Music from Indiana University, Bloomington. Fr. Pedigo did his theology studies at St Patrick Seminary, Menlo Park and holds a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Jesuit School of Theology.

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