Charity is the fruit of fasting. It is not the seed.

But yes, both the fruit and the seed are, as it is in nature, the goal.

One of the strangest developments in the last century is the slow erosion and now disappearance of the Church’s most obvious and salutary year-long discipline: fasting from food. Instead, we are given high-sounding substitutes that, frankly, speak to the trickery of the Hidden Hand in manipulating language and true catechesis—and the kind hearts of the faithful—to actually turn that faithful away from both truth and charity.

Instead, we are given high-sounding substitutes that, frankly, speak to the trickery of the Hidden Hand in manipulating true catechesis–and the kind hearts of the faithful–to actually turn that faithful away from both truth and charity.

Recent messages have encouraged us to “fast from negativity,” or from “mean words,” or from “social media,” or from whatever low-hanging fruit that makes the high fruit seem not just impossible, but unnecessary. None of those suggestions are inherently wrong–the low-hanging fruit still has flavor–but when coupled with the litany of other subtractions from Catholic instruction over the years, they reveal something deeper about the modern religious instinct: they skip directly to the effects of conversion while quietly ignoring the cause that produces it.

Simply put, fallen man requires discipline of the body. After the Fall, the passions do not govern themselves–they must be governed.

The saints, the Scriptures, and the pre-conciliar popes didn’t speak in this modernist fashion, where things seem so simple and we are tempted to think fasting from food becomes not only unnecessary, not only impossible, but actually absurd–a sentiment I have witnessed on many a comment on social media. (To the extent we can believe these comments aren’t algorithm-curating robots, of course).

So a discipline that Christ himself both practiced and commanded has become a practice to scoff at, to distrust, to eliminate entirely.

Teachers correctly catechized understand that the disorder begins in the body and the passions, and that the first step toward interior reform is the deliberate mortification of those appetites that most easily rule us. Christ did not begin his public ministry with a social media post about kindness. He began with forty days of fasting in the desert–after which he was tempted by Satan. It was clear that fasting was an expected part of the schedule (Matt 6:16-18; Mark 9:28-29). Even after his ministry on earth was consummated and then finished forty days after the Resurrection, he had not left fasting as a suggestion. He had already assumed it as a discipline of his followers once He was “taken away from them” (Matt 9:15).

Saints and Popes Taught from Scripture

The early Church understood all of this instinctively. The Fathers never treated fasting as a metaphor for vague moral improvement. They spoke of it first as the causal discipline of the body, from which the reform of the soul follows–from which the effect of the cause actually glorifies God, and can be lasting. The great Doctor of the Church St Jerome had this to say concerning Mark 9:29:

…the folly which is connected with the softness of the flesh, is healed by fasting; anger and laziness are healed by prayer. Each would have its own medicine, which must be applied to it; that which is used for the heel will not cure the eye; by fasting, the passions of the body, by prayer, the plagues of the soul, are healed.

Prayer heals some things. Fasting heals other things. And sometimes it’s different for different people. St Jerome wasn’t talking about the effects or the sin outcome itself, but the cause. That is why traditional Catholic teaching always spoke of fasting first in its most literal sense: abstaining from food. Not because food is inherently evil, but because it is good, pleasurable, and let’s face it—an occasion of the sin of gluttony—and therefore precisely the kind of thing we the fallen must learn to govern.

St John Chrysostom, another Doctor of the Church, speaks on fasting in a way that combines both the cause and the effect:

Fasting is a medicine. But like all medicines, though it be very profitable to the person who knows how to use it, it frequently becomes useless (and even harmful) in the hands of him who is unskillful in its use.

For the honor of fasting consists not in abstinence from food, but in withdrawing from sinful practices, since he who limits his fasting only to abstinence from meats is one who especially disparages fasting.

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see an enemy, be reconciled with him. If you see a friend gaining honor, do not be jealous of him. And let not only the mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all members of your bodies.

Let the hands fast by being pure from plundering and avarice. Let the feet fast by ceasing from running to unlawful spectacles. Let the eyes fast, being taught never to fix themselves rudely on handsome faces, or to busy themselves with strange beauties. For looking is the food of the eyes, but if it be such as is unlawful or forbidden, it mars the fast and upsets the whole safety of the soul. But if it be lawful and safe, it adorns fasting. For it would be among things most absurd to abstain from lawful food because of the fast, but with the eyes to touch even what is forbidden! Do you not eat meat? Feed not upon lasciviousness by means of your eyes! Let the ear fast also. The fasting of the ear consists in refusing to receive evil speakings and calumnies. It is written, “You shall not receive a false report” (Exodus 23:1).

Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speech. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour the brothers and sisters. The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor. Because of this Paul utters the fearful saying, “If you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal.5:15). You have not fixed your teeth in his flesh, but you have fixed your slander in his soul and inflicted the wound of evil suspicion, and you have harmed in a thousand ways yourself, him and many others, for in slandering your neighbor you have made him who listens to the slander worse, for should he be a wicked person, he becomes more careless when he finds a partner in his wickedness. And should he be a just person, he is tempted to arrogance and gets puffed up, being led on by the sin of others to imagining great things concerning himself. Besides this, you have struck at the common welfare of the Church herself, for all those who hear you will not only accuse the supposed sinner, but the entire Christian community….

And so I desire to fix three precepts in your mind so that you may accomplish them during the fast: to speak ill of no one, to hold no one for an enemy, and to expel from your mouth altogether the evil habit of swearing.

Emphasis mine. In other words, we are not to read that as the elimination of the fast, as so many might, but the glorification of it. It is the same idea as when Jesus said “…when you fast…” and not “…if you fast.” Fasting was always the first given and involved temptation all unto itself that modern minds cannot even conceive–because we don’t fast. The saints did not replace fasting with moral advice. They insisted that the body be disciplined so that the soul could be freed. Only from there can moral advice glorify God.

Charity is the fruit of fasting and prayer. It is not the seed.

As one more illustration from the saints–this one from a third Doctor, St Peter Chrysologus–we see the cause-and-effect binary extended to three–to a braid–that prayer, fasting, and mercy must be practiced together:

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.…

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

How often is such sweet and inspiring complexity–in all its rich simplicity–taught today?

The popes once preached on this as well. In Quod Auctoritate, an encyclical proclaiming an extraordinary jubilee in the 1880s, Pope Leo XIII taught this point with inspiring clarity, sparing not the rod, when instructing bishops and priests about the duty of teaching penance to the faithful:

4. But you will observe, Venerable Brethren, that success will largely depend upon your industry and zeal, as it will be needful to prepare the people properly and carefully if they are to reap the fruits which are to be placed before them. We commit it to your judgment and prudence to place this matter in the hands of priestswhom you may select, that by discourses fitted to the capacity of the crowd they may instruct them, and above all exhort them to that penance which, according to St. Augustine, consists in “the daily chastisement of the good and the faithful followers of Christ in which we strike our breasts, saying forgive us our sins.’” With good reason We mention here in the first place that part of penance which consists of the voluntary punishment of the body. You know the temper of the times–how many there are who love to live delicately and shrink from whatever requires manhood and generosity; who, when aliments come, discover in them sufficient reasons for not obeying the salutary laws of the Church, thinking the burden laid upon them more than they can bear, when they are told to abstain from certain kinds of food or to fast during a few days in the year. It is not to be wondered at if, weakened by these habits of indulgence, they gradually give themselves up body and soul to the more imperious passions. It is therefore necessary to recall to the paths of moderation those who have fallen or who are likely to fall through this sort of effeminacy. Therefore those who speak to the people should lay it down persistently and clearly that according not only to the law of the Gospel, but even to the dictates of natural reason, a man is bound to govern himself and keep his passions under strict control, and moreover, that sin cannot be expiated except by penance. That the virtue of which We have spoken may be durable, it will be prudent to put it in some sort under the safeguard and protection of a stable institution; you know well, venerable brothers, to what We allude; We mean that you should continue each one in his own diocese to protect and propagate the Third Order, called the Secular Order, of the Franciscan Friars. To keep up the spirit of penance in the Christian multitude nothing is more effectual than the example and the grace of the Patriarch Francis of Assisi, who combined with the greatest innocence of life so much zeal for mortification that the image of Jesus Christ crucified was not less visible in his life and conduct than in the signs which were supernaturally impressed upon him. The laws of his Order, which We have modified for the times, are as light to bear as they are effectual for the practice of Christian virtue.

Notice several things in Leo’s instruction–all of which echo Scripture and the saints, which is why traditional, perennial Catholic teaching is the catechesis so many faithful are turning to.

-First, fasting and penance are not presented as optional devotional experiments. They are described as part of the “law of the Gospel” itself, something rooted both in revelation and in what Leo calls the “dictates of natural reason.”

-Second, Leo places the responsibility largely on the clergy he is addressing. The bishops are to select priests who will instruct and exhort the people clearly and persistently about penance. In other words, the Church is not meant to whisper about mortification with effeminate apology or replace it with softer substitutes. The shepherds are commanded to teach it, and teach it with rigor.

-And third, Leo identifies the very spirit that dominates modern culture, even in the nineteenth century: a people who “love to live delicately,” who recoil from anything requiring discipline or sacrifice, and who invent reasons why even a few days of fasting are “more than they can bear.”

What would nineteenth century Leo say about the current state of affairs?

Final Words

Ultimately this is much ado about nothing. It is a false dilemma that doesn’t need to exist. The saints understood something modern Christianity forgets: the body must learn obedience before the soul can learn charity. This really is nothing groundbreaking.

It is precisely why the modern capture of language (again) and the shift toward symbolic fasts—fasting from irritability, or from political arguments, or from online distractions—while not wrong in themselves, quietly miss the deeper point. Those things are, obviously, salutary fruits.

Those symbolic fasts may indeed produce good effects temporarily.

But fruit is not the root.

And besides that, in the best point of all perhaps—why even call this a fast? Just stop doing it if you’re a jerk. We don’t “fast” from accelerating the car when we come to a stop sign. We just stop. So “just stop” being a jerk. Leave the word “fast” for what it has traditionally meant.

Language capture—it is one of the most sinister tactics of the enemy. It gets us to delineating issues that don’t even need to be discussed.

But ultimately to remain true to my theological thesis here, out of charity, the Church has always attacked causes—and that is why the language of “fasting” meant a certain thing. It has always insisted that the passions must first be disciplined, and the most immediate way to begin that battle is by mortifying the appetite that rules us daily: the appetite for food. Without that interior battle, the softer “fasts” so often proposed today risk becoming something else entirely—spiritual self-help exercises that make us feel reflective while leaving the deeper disorder untouched. And the supposed charity encouraged with such fluff is never permanently practiced.

This brings us back to the uncomfortable implication of the words spoken by saints and popes of the past….

If the faithful today rarely hear about fasting, penance, and the mortification of the body, it is not because Catholicism changed.

It is because shepherds are not tending the flock. It is because sheep are not insisting on being led.

Fr Ripperger recently said in an interview with Shawn Ryan that we get the leaders we deserve, that most Catholics today are living a life of grave sin. Perhaps one reason is because we are prone to seek out shepherds who will only tickle our ears instead of kicking us where we need it.

Do we believe this to be true? Are we truly willing to be led–correctly?

It is likely we would need a fast all unto itself even to admit such difficult possibilities about ourselves.

And so, the strange and unenviable situation arises in which utterly sinful laymen like me find themselves quoting the popes and saints to remind fellow Catholics what the Church still requires–even though no one tells us that.

Charity is the fruit of fasting. It is not the seed.

Or just know the difference between stop and fast.

Such instruction–or better, such illustration of a chorus of witnesses throughout Church history–should not be necessary, not from a soul like mine.

But alas, here we are.