Thoughts on Fasting

Fasting is a practice that God gives you in order to make you a "person" in the truest sense of the term.  A "person" is a relational human being; a being who realizes that they are not self-existent but intimately intertwined with and formed through the lives of all those around them.  The ancient Church adopted and modified the word "persona" to describe the beings of the Trinity whose existence is bound to the other beings in that Triune communion; beings who are eternally in relationship with one another (Father, Son and Holy-Spirit).  Each "person's" existence cannot be known apart from the relationships they indwell.  If we human beings are to seek to reflect the image and likeness of God, we to must become relational beings in the Way that God is.  In other words, we must learn to love properly since "God is love" and love is the description of communion actualized.  This is precisely how fasting helps us to become persons.  We, as sinful people, have the tendency to prioritize our own wants before the needs of others.  Fasting helps us to kill the seeds of and the tendencies that impel us towards individualism.  It helps us to say “no” to ourselves and it helps us to remove the selfish desires that distract us so that we can be more aware and available to the others we are truly in communion with.  The practice helps to extinguish the tendency within us to use people for our own self-interests.  It forms us in the Way of self-denial for the sake of others and ingrains in us  the understanding that other people are placed in our lives not as objects to be used but as persons to be loved and celebrated for the unique creation that they are.  It teaches us that the way we exist for others and the way that they exist for us truly matters.  It instills in us the understanding that even reality itself is formed through how we treat and how we are treated by those around us.