A New Way to Think About Fasting During Lent

Fasting is an ancient spiritual practice often associated with Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter when we remember the time Jesus spent in the wilderness before his death and resurrection. Early Christians, following Jesus’s example, fasted regularly.

While fasting is oftentimes associated with food, today we might interpret the term more expansively: pausing or stopping certain habits to focus on what’s essential, what’s true, and what’s holy.

“It’s perspective-taking,” says the Rev. Kristin Kaulbach Miles, priest and Trinity’s director of Parish Life. “Fasting is a discipline that allows us to become aware of how our attention often goes toward things that won’t truly satisfy us — or might even harm us or our neighbors. We fast from practices that get in the way of love.”

Fasting could be giving up doom-scrolling or negative self-talk, skipping your morning coffee for a week, saying no to overly busy schedules, or even rejecting disillusionment and despair. “In a culture of consuming, fasting gives us capacity,” says Mother Kristin. “When we quiet the noise, when we slow down, we notice the ways we’re enveloped by, and bound together in, God’s love.”

Stepping out of our norms allows us to face our mortality. “There’s a restlessness that’s part of being human. Like Jesus in the desert, fasting connects to our bodies as we learn to sit with discomfort,” says Mother Kristin. “Instead of filling a void, we make space. And in that stillness, we pay attention to what’s holy — what’s healing. Holiness brings us back to unity with God and with one another.”

When we quiet the noise, when we slow down, we notice the ways we’re enveloped by, and bound together in, God’s love.”

In Scripture, the prophet Isaiah takes it a step further, describing fasting as not only taking things away but committing to justice-oriented action. “Is not this the fast that I choose,” he asks, speaking from God’s perspective, “to loose the bonds of injustice . . . to let the oppressed go free . . . to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house . . . ?”

Isaiah is highlighting our tendency to get so wrapped up in our own lives and religious practice — perhaps hanging on to our false sense of control — that we fail to notice the injustice at our doorstep.

“Fasting is an opportunity to recognize that we live in a self-focused scarcity culture — always asking, ‘What do I need? What am I missing?’ — and choosing to see things another way,” says Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, PhD, associate director, Faith Formation and Education, Spiritual Practices, Retreats, and Pilgrimage. “It can be a way to shift our attention from ourselves to the people around us: We can fast from the false and damaging belief that we’re individuals doing this all on our own. Our lives are interconnected; we cannot flourish while our neighbor is in need.”

Fasting isn’t an exercise in self-improvement, and it’s not intended to make us feel bad about ourselves. At its core, fasting is a spiritual encounter with the divine that leads to repentance. Ideas of sin and shame might come to mind when we think of repentance, but its purpose is simply recalibration. 

When we repent, we see things as they are, in light of God’s love for the world, and align our thoughts and actions with that deeper truth. We turn away from unhelpful ways of living and turn toward God’s way of doing things. Bishop Mariann Budde, of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, describes repentance as “acknowledging where we have gotten lost and attempting to reorient our lives back to what matters most.”

Ultimately, fasting — whether it’s releasing a burden or, on the flip side, taking on a new perspective — connects us to both our humanity and our calling: to love one another, and ourselves, as God loves us. As the Rev. Michael Bird preaches, we’re made for community, “created out of love, with love, for love.” Lent is an opportunity to ask what’s getting between us and love, then compassionately make the adjustments to get back on track.