The Discipline Of Fasting In The Catholic Church

Improved Essays
Fasting is a Christian discipline for one who wants “to let go of an appetite in order to seek God on matters of deep concern for others, myself and the world” It is a discipline that is to be done for God and seen only by God.

At the commencement of Bible College I understood fasting to be a practice that people in the church did in order to get God to hear their prayers and move on their behalf and answer the prayers that they had placed before Him during the time of fasting. It was like a way to get your prayers answered in an accelerated way.

Mother Teresa would be a person in history who I class as someone who significantly contributed to the discipline of fasting. If fasting is something that we do to “remember the poor
…show more content…
Fasting in the Catholic Faith doesn’t appear to be one of choice but one of obeying the rules or Law. “The rules for fasting and abstinence in the Catholic Church are set forth in the Code of Canon Law (for the Roman Catholic Church) and in the Code of Oriental Churches (for the Eastern Catholic Church). The Canon Law that the followers of the Catholic Faith are to follow in relation to fasting are Canons 1250-1252. There are several laws that the Catholic need to adhere to in regards to fasting, such as specific days to fast and the age you become when you are to start and finish participating in fasting. While the followers of this faith are bound by law to participate in the discipline, I have the freedom to decide if I want to fast and the duration. There are no rules or laws that I am to follow or participate in to fulfil the discipline of …show more content…
Fasting is a time where we say to God, ‘I will go without so I can spend it with You’. During a fast we can become more spiritually sensitive to the Lord. To combine prayer and fasting we not only get a clarity of mind and spirit and a releasing of the voice of the Holy Spirit but is also a way that we can gain spiritual and material victories. We are to be encouraged in participating in the discipline of fasting, Jesus fasted and assumed that His disciples would fast. He also instructed us on how to fast and when we were fasting how to display ourselves. Matthew

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Finding Squanto If someone is in a new, unfamiliar place, with friends and family getting sick and dying around them, what reason would one have to carry on? The Puritans had a reason, and that is that they had an unwavering faith in God, which William Bradford, a leader of the Puritans, is a good a representation of. He wrote of their times of struggle, the voyage, and the suffering that ensued soon after landing, and especially their prosperous times, where they met a helpful Native American tribe, and they certainly saw God’s hand through it all.…

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Richard J. Foster provides practical and feasible disciplines for believers to implement in their lives with the purpose of going deeper in their relationship with God. The emphasis on spiritual experiences challenges Christians to move from faith to action and integrity. Foster divides the disciplines into three movements of the spirit, which include the inward disciplines, the outward disciplines, and the corporate disciplines. The four inward disciplines are meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Foster implements useful scriptures and commentary to convey the importance of practicing the inward disciplines, which will improve a Christian’s spiritual life.…

    • 195 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prisoners also did not fast because they were starting to loose all their faith in their God. If you were loosing all your faith, there would be no reason to fast for a holiday relating to your religion. I believe that if the Jews had fasted or missed work to observe their holiday the SS may have killed them. This is because the SS were very violent, and the entire reason they were there was because they were Jews. This is why Elie did not fast, and why I feel that other Jews should not have…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Despite having the same basic understanding of the world through Christianity and predominantly Calvinism, John Cotton and Jonathan Edwards both depict varied versions of what Luther regards as the spiritual and bodily natures that we, as Christians, exhibit. While John Cotton’s Christian Calling emphasizes our bodily nature as he focuses on the outward acts of faith such as expressing our faith in accordance to our obedience to the Lord’s will, Johnathan Edwards’ opposes this viewpoint in Religious Affections as he depicts a greater emphasis on our spiritual nature through thoroughly experiencing grace in our heart; Luther reconciles that our bodily nature expresses our spiritual nature. Cotton’s emphasizes that our bodily nature is a crucial…

    • 1250 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Native Americans Religion • Each tribe has their own religion • A ritual taken by adolescence boys, this includes a journey to have a vision of a future guardian spirit that includes: fasting, isolation and meditation. This rituals is about Animism and that everything has a spirit. Some explain it as a experience that takes the boy out of his body and while still containing consciousness. Those taking it were seeking help from a spirit guardian • Spirits can contact the human world. Some native American traditions included a spirits taking control of a human conscious.…

    • 615 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Truth About Intermittent Fasting: Rhetorical Analysis of Carrie Dennett’s “Despite the hype, intermittent fasting isn’t a magic weight-loss cure” What is intermittent fasting? Is it any better than other ways of dieting? Is it effective? Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool where you follow a pattern of schedule when to eat and when not to eat.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The Green Corn Ceremony

    • 1346 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Fasting was one of the principle ways of attaining spiritual purity. Instead, they also took part in drinking purgatives to rid their bodies of any impurities and negative energies that lingered in their bodies. A ritual most often performed by the Oklahoma Seminoles today. After the four to eight days of fasting the tribe will prepare a large meal to start off the new year and of course to give thanks for the corn they have received. A very important aspect of any Green Corn Ceremony is the Green Corn Dance, performed today by Floridian Seminoles.…

    • 1346 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Foster, Richard J. Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1998. 9780060628390. Content Summary…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dr. Mercola is alternative medicine proponent with a controversial preposition on the long standing eating pattern human adults tend to have. He advocates intermittent fasting as an important strategy for effective weight loss and disease prevention. He states that eating two times a day is an overall better approach than eating three meals a day. In his strategy, he mentions people should choose either breakfast and lunch, breakfast and dinner, or lunch and dinner as a combination for their new eating pattern. He further notes that individuals who choose to eat dinner should eat three hours at a minimum before going to bed.…

    • 522 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Anita Desai’s cultural and influencing novel, Fasting, Feasting, the author employs literary devices such as figurative language, reluctant speech, and third person point of view in order to characterize Arun’s distasteful experience at the beach. Demonstrating the use of descriptive words in the passage, Desai illustrates Arun’s annoyance with nature while going to the beach. While making his way through the woods, Arun depicts the cicadas’ “shrill” and the birds’ “shrieks” as an unpleasant sound. Portraying the negative connotation of the language, the “shrill” and “shrieks” represent Arun’s own emotions of unwillingness and annoyance. The piercing noises demonstrate how easily nature disrupts Arun’s mind as he views them as “jarring”…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Indulgences are one of the most controversial traditions in the Catholic Church. They have impacted the Church for hundreds of years and were a major factor in the Protestant schism within Christianity. Indulgences have had positive results but are often abused. The Church’s Confession of Faith (CCF) is a reliable source for a detailed explanation of what indulgences are and how they work, but fails to capture the importance of indulgences in a historical context and their impact on Christianity. CCF begins the analysis of indulgences by describing what an indulgence is and the underlying preconditions for it to be received.…

    • 1510 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ramadan Speech Outline

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages

    A. From sunup to sundown during Ramadan, Muslims must abstain from food, drinks, smoking and sex. 1. Generally, Muslims eat two larger meals during Ramadan. They rise early and have a large meal in the morning, and consume another large meal when the sun goes down. Pregnant women, the ill, and prepubescent children are exempted from the requirement.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We often hear the phrases, “food is fuel” and “you are what you eat” whether it is coming from a doctor or peers and family. Although it may seem unbelievable, it is true, how we balance the amount and what type of foods we eat in our daily lives can benefit or adversely affect our bodies. So what makes people choose to eat in a certain manner and put specific foods in their bodies? Well, through examining my own relationship with food I have discovered that dietary restrictions, parents’ cultural and personal preferences associated with specific foods can cause a person to lean favorably towards or turn them off from consuming foods, thereby molding an eating pattern. First and foremost, the number one aspect that has affected my food…

    • 848 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Why you should eat breakfast? Keywords: breakfast nutrients vital weight Why is it that we see people skipping breakfast now more than ever before? Is it that people like to skip breakfast regardless, or are they on a dieting spree? Studies have shown that the present trend indicates that more and more people all over the world are skipping breakfast.…

    • 750 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    1.0 Introduction The central teachings of traditional Catholicism are that Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; that his life on earth, his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven are proof of God 's love for humanity and God 's forgiveness of human sins; and that by faith in Jesus one may attain salvation and eternal life (infoplease.com, 2012). In Catholicism, the term scared means; The holy or divine. The sacred is that which pertains to God, as distinguished from what pertains to human beings (catholicculture.org, n.d). Ritual in the Catholic faith is essential as it provides stability, communication between God and participants and overall enhancement of religious life. Rituals such as Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Marriage, Eucharist and Reconciliation are crucial to the Catholic relationship with God throughout the stages of life.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays