There is no getting around fasting during Lent.
Not only is it one of the three pillars of spiritual practice along with prayer and almsgiving, but it also bookends the period of preparation for Easter.
Fasting and abstinence is required of adult Catholics, ages 18-59, at the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday and at its end on Good Friday. This means eating only one full meal and two small meals that equal one meal as well as no snacks in between meals and no meat consumption.
Creighton University's Online Ministries program, "Praying Lent 2017," says the purpose of fasting is to "experience the effects of not eating. It also serves to be a penance or a sacrifice for the purpose of strengthening us."
"When we get hungry, we have a heightened sense of awareness," it adds, noting that the practice helps people to clarify their thoughts. "It is purifying and prepares us to pray more deeply," the resource from Jesuit-run Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, points out.
In addition to the two days of fasting, Catholics 14 and older are obligated to abstain from eating meat during Fridays in Lent.
The Friday practice is a sacrifice meant "to help Catholics make much bigger sacrifices," the Creighton resource says, pointing out that not eating meat doesn't give someone permission to eat a fancy fish meal. And for vegetarians, it could mean abstaining from a favorite meal.
Fasting, which has deep roots in many religious traditions, is meant to draw participants into deeper prayer and also link them with those in need.
For Christians, the tradition has roots in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples how they should look when they are fasting -- not gloomy, not neglecting their appearance and with their faces washed so they do not appear to be fasting.
"Jesus says when we fast, not if," said Father John Riccardo, pastor of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Plymouth, Michigan.
He said the key to fasting is to attach an intention to the practice "rather than seeing it as a flexing of our self-discipline muscles." It makes the practice "not about me but someone else," he told Catholic News Service March 1.
"Fasting is heavy artillery," he added because the person doing it is denying themselves something and trusting that God will use it.
Although fasting is technically not eating food, giving something up can also be a form of fasting.
Msgr. Charles Murphy, author of the 2010 book: "The Spirituality of Fasting: Rediscovering a Christian Practice" said there are two forms of fasting -- total and partial. A total fast is eating nothing and drinking nothing for a designated period of time where a partial fast involves giving up certain things for a specific period of time.
Partial fasting is a popular part of Lent where people choose to give up something such as soda, candy, beer, television or more increasingly, social media.
The top things people said they were going to give up this Lent, according to OpenBible.info, a Web search engine that examined Twitter posts during the week of Feb. 26, included a mix of social media and food and one wishful thinking: school. The only other top 10 mention that wasn't a food or drink was to give up swearing.
Partial fasting, just like a full fast, shouldn't be done to benefit the person doing it. "It's not to make us more narcissistic, which it can do," said Paulist Father Jack Collins, who helped Busted Halo, the Paulist website, with videos like "You don't know Jack about Lent" a few years ago.
"We don't fast to feel good, but to remind ourselves that half the world goes to bed hungry," he said, adding that it's a way of reminding us "we are our brother's keeper."
Paulist Father Larry Rice, director of the University Catholic Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is not keen on people looking for a loophole in their fasting practices, for example saying that Sundays don't count and they can have whatever they gave up that day.
"I get that people want a pressure relief valve, " he said, "but when I open my missal it says the First Sunday of Lent" meaning Sunday counts.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gives a little leeway here. In its fasting guidelines it notes that if someone is giving something up for Lent it is more effective if it is continuous -- "kept on Sundays as well. That being said, such practices are not regulated by the church, but by individual conscience."
Father Rice, who is giving up riding elevators for Lent, said the Catholic college students he works with typically give up a food or social media. "They won't give up texting. That would be like giving up breathing," he added.
This age group, and Catholics at large, could take a small step toward a phone fast by following the initiative of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, which urged Catholics to not use their phones on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday this year "as a way to reflect on God and the meaning of the Easter season."
— Carol Zimmermann, Catholic News Service
Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay, Wis., former chairman of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, offers “10 Things to Remember for Lent”:
1. Remember the formula. The Church does a good job capturing certain truths with easy-to-remember lists and formulas: 10 Commandments, 7 sacraments, 3 persons in the Trinity. For Lent, the Church gives us almost a slogan—Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving—as the three things we need to work on during the season.
2. It’s a time of prayer. Lent is essentially an act of prayer spread out over 40 days. As we pray, we go on a journey, one that hopefully brings us closer to Christ and leaves us changed by the encounter with Him.
3. It’s a time to fast. With the fasts of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, meatless Fridays, and our personal disciplines interspersed, Lent is the only time many Catholics these days actually fast. And maybe that’s why it gets all the attention. “What are you giving up for Lent? Hotdogs? Beer? Jelly beans?” It’s almost a game for some of us, but fasting is actually a form of penance, which helps us turn away from sin and toward Christ.
4. It’s a time to work on discipline. The 40 days of Lent are also a good, set time to work on personal discipline in general. Instead of giving something up, it can be doing something positive. “I’m going to exercise more. I’m going to pray more. I’m going to be nicer to my family, friends and coworkers.”
5. It’s about dying to yourself. The more serious side of Lenten discipline is that it’s about more than self-control – it’s about finding aspects of yourself that are less than Christ-like and letting them die. The suffering and death of Christ are foremost on our minds during Lent, and we join in these mysteries by suffering, dying with Christ and being resurrected in a purified form.
6. Don’t do too much. It’s tempting to make Lent some ambitious period of personal reinvention, but it’s best to keep it simple and focused. There’s a reason the Church works on these mysteries year after year. We spend our entire lives growing closer to God. Don’t try to cram it all in one Lent. That’s a recipe for failure.
7. Lent reminds us of our weakness. Of course, even when we set simple goals for ourselves during Lent, we still have trouble keeping them. When we fast, we realize we’re all just one meal away from hunger. In both cases, Lent shows us our weakness. This can be painful, but recognizing how helpless we are makes us seek God’s help with renewed urgency and sincerity.
8. Be patient with yourself. When we’re confronted with our own weakness during Lent, the temptation is to get angry and frustrated. “What a bad person I am!” But that’s the wrong lesson. God is calling us to be patient and to see ourselves as He does, with unconditional love.
9. Reach out in charity. As we experience weakness and suffering during Lent, we should be renewed in our compassion for those who are hungry, suffering or otherwise in need. The third part of the Lenten formula is almsgiving. It’s about more than throwing a few extra dollars in the collection plate; it’s about reaching out to others and helping them without question as a way of sharing the experience of God’s unconditional love.
10. Learn to love like Christ. Giving of ourselves in the midst of our suffering and self-denial brings us closer to loving like Christ, who suffered and poured Himself out unconditionally on cross for all of us. Lent is a journey through the desert to the foot of the cross on Good Friday, as we seek Him out, ask His help, join in His suffering, and learn to love like Him.
— U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Find more Lenten resources at https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year-and-calendar/lent