5) And Mary tells us to fast. Fasting is not just for lent. And it’s not just a “pious” practice. In some sense, we do it all the time (in some form): we aren’t eating sweets or chocolate at every meal, nor are we having sex every moment of the day. If we eat sweets all the time, we tire of them. If we have sex all day long, we tire of that too. Likewise, if we eat sweets all the time, we’re neglecting our health. And if we’re having sex all the time, we’re probably neglecting some obligation we have outside the bedroom.

In these two things, we know that we must practice some temperance. That is, we choose to do some thing at some time and we choose to refrain from some thing at other times. Being able to choose—to say “yes” AND to say “no” to some thing—is freedom. If we’re saying “yes” all the time to our urge for chocolate or to our urge for sex, we have become slaves to that urge. We cannot chose. We aren’t free.

Not only is fasting an exercise of freedom, but it leads to greater enjoyment of the thing we have fasted from. When I do a long day of work, and haven’t had food all day, and I come home to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes sooooo good. Somehow, it tastes better at that moment than any peanut butter and jelly sandwich I’ve had before. The same can be said about sex: if there is a period of fasting, then the next time will be even more enjoyable. You won’t take your spouse for granted, you’ll give yourself more completely, and you’ll find that you have chosen, together, to give completely and freely (instead of being a slave to your urge). Only by saying “no” could you have truly given a full “yes.”

And even more so, fasting allows us to participate in and receive God’s amazing love and the gifts that come from it. God knows how much of a sacrifice it is to not have food for a day. God knows how much of a sacrifice it is to go without sex for a week. God understands the pain and the suffering involved, because God sacrificed, suffered, and experienced the greatest human pain by being on the cross. And just as God poured out his love and grace from that cross—love and grace which brings us to eternal life after we die—God pours out his love and his infinitely many gifts upon you who sacrifice and suffer. As you fast, He gives. As you receive no food into your body, He feeds your soul.


Jesus said to her, "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14)