Fasting and The Eucharist: Catholic Participation in the Sacrifice of Christ
Christ, as the ultimate sacrifice in Christianity, gave his own life for the benefit of others. His self-sacrifice continues to this day to be celebrated in the Catholic Mass. Through communion, or receiving the Eucharist, one is able to actively partake of the fruits of that sacrifice. But how does one follow Jesus’ example? One surely cannot strive for the same kind of physical death that Jesus experienced. Thus, practice of another form of self-sacrifice becomes necessary.
To eat, to nourish one’s self is an act that is essential for human life. What could cause more pain in this life than to deny one’s self sustenance? The practice of fasting, as one form of self-denial, can serve to bring one closer to identifying with the sacrifice of Christ. This is especially evident when fasting is examined in relation to the Eucharist in the Catholic tradition.
But before we continue, a distinction must be made between two different types of self-denial. To fast, and to not eat do not constitute the same act. My own personal experience while exploring the topic of fasting has deeply colored my view of the practice of fasting. Many personal interests led me to pursue the question of fasting as a form of self-sacrifice. One was my personal engagement with and interest in the Roman Catholic tradition. Another, much more personal influence is my personal relationship with food. To stop eating is one of the (unhealthy ways) in which I personally deal with stress or depression. In reading Caroline Bynum’s book on the relationship medieval women mystics had with food I was able to identify on many levels. These women, in some cases, lived for...
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...5 At the request of my friend, her name has been changed, in case her mother really does have spies everywhere.
16 Nussbaum, Melissa. “Your paper on fasting.” Email to Lorena Dremel. 03/06/2003
17 Dugan, Kathleen M. “Fasting For Life: The Place of Fasting in the Christian Tradition.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 63 Issue 3 (Fall 1995): 547
18 Repohl, Roger F. “Hungry Together.” Commonweal. Vol. 124 Issue 3 (02/14/1997): 9-10
19 Several articles including:
Orsy, Ladislas. “Holy Days of Obligation? Holidays of Celebration?” America. Vol. 166 Issue 2
(01/18/1992-01/25/1992): 28-29.
Rogers, Carole Garibaldi. “Why Catholics Fast: Searching for the Tradition.” America. Vol. 186 Issue 6
(02/25/2002): 6-10.
Sherry, Mary. “Fasting? But That’s So Mortifying.” America. Vol. 186 Issue 7 (03/04/2002): 21-22.
...such as extreme spiritual austerities can hold their place in history because they mattered to the people who practiced them, not necessarily because they were an agent for driving change. Bynum rejects morally absolutist reconstructions of the past in favour of a more relativistic reading which delves into the imagination and subconscious of the medieval writers themselves. She meets them, as much as possible, in their own milieu rather than projecting modern constructions (such as ‘anorexia nervosa’) into the past where they serve little use in our understanding of the medieval mind. Despite her close work with the Annalist School, Bynum makes no attempt toward ‘l’Histoire Totale’ or some grand narrative of the past, and in this regard the work is most honest, thought-provoking, and definitive for 21st century scholars studying the medieval mind and its times.
Alain de Botton, in his TED talk “Atheism 2.0”, identified various attributes from religions that he thinks atheism, the non-religious community, would do well to emulate. Of these attributes, one that stood out was how all religions, almost as a universal rule, each have a calendar by which believers adhere to. These calendars typically mark days, or even weeks, that carry some importance and meaning to followers of a given religion, and serves as a reminder for the values of which these religions stand for. For instance, the Christian calendar has a season of Lent, whereby Christians all over the world choose to give up worldly comforts and fast for a period a little longer than a month, as a time for self-reflection and penance to prepare for Easter. Members of these religions all across the world would be able to stay synchronized regardless of any geographical limitations using a unified calendar. According to Botton, having a calendar that is observed by all followers of the religion enables the religion to be “multinational, branded, and possessing an identity so they don't get lost” (de Botton). Therefore, it is unsurprising how the secular world have adapted various religious holidays and integrated it into their own culture.
The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Human Nature, by Leon Kass takes a unique view of examining the body and soul by focusing on the eating habits of human beings. He uses this in order to distinguish humans from animals and the divine element (God). In this book, Kass touches on the point of sanctified eating. In Kass' final chapter, he looks at the "created order", the dietary laws in the chapter of Leviticus in the Holy Bible and the problem of eating. Not only do these sub-chapters actually give a good sense of what humans are in the design of divinity, but it also shows how far human beings have to go in order to be close to the divine power of God.
Sacrifice within the social context can be transgressed into two aspects, one relating to the offender, and the other being the offended one, God. “If individuals entered a state incongruent with good relations with God, they had to undergo rites to restore them to a normative status” (Davies, 1985;155). Thus the sacrifice encompassed this social dimension. The part played by God in the social ...
As we take a look at earlier restrictions on the Christian diet, we have to point to N...
Grimm, V. (1996). From Feasting to Fasting, the Evolution of a Sin: Attributes to Food in Late Antinquity. New York.
... then he or she may as well chose to vomit that food. This can be showed and further explained once again, referring to Catherine. The Church, fearing a possible heretic, had men who watched her and ordered her to eat. At the beginning, she accepted because if she didn’t she would have been accused of being a witch (the worst offence possible during the time), and possibly tortured or murdered. But she was not able to endure the presence of food in her body and purged everything she ate. (Bell)
The Mass is the ultimate gift and sacrifice ever existed. The sacrifice of the Mass was not just more than two-thousand years ago, at the last super, it still goes on every day throughout the world. Whenever we are at Mass we are standing at the foot of the cross, were Jesus died. Without the priest how are we able to even receive he sacrament. In the following paragraphs I am going to be speaking about, the priest receiving Christ in the Eucharist and what it does to him, what is the main point of the priest in the Mass and, how can a priest be without the Eucharist.
The death of the childless Charles II, the last Hapsburg King of Spain, in 1700 caused a crisis in succession, which resulted in the War of the Spanish Succession, a matter of international concern, thus, causing major European conflict. Before his death, Charles had named Prince Philippe of Anjou, his grandnephew and the grandson of Louis XIV of France, heir to the Spanish Empire. Fearing the power of the House of Bourbons as rulers of both Spain and France, other European powers Britain, The Dutch Republic, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire (joined later by Portugal) formed The Grand Alliance in support of Archduke Charles’, son of Emperor Leopold I of the Hapsburg Empire, bid for the Spanish throne. The War lasted until 1714, and although
Eastman, Roger. The Ways of Religion: An Introduction to the Major Traditions. Third Edition. Oxford University Press. N.Y. 1999
... of sainthood requires an excess of self-restraint that makes it impossible to attain the moral mean. The saint may tell himself that the denial of worldly pleasures will bring him true happiness, but in fact he is pursuing a kind of perverse pleasure in self-restraint. Saint Augustine is looking for happiness from beyond life; but happiness, as Aristotle says, comes from achieving the moral mean in life. If we aspire to the moral mean, we must consider moral martyrdom to be like any other excess. In this view, the denial of worldly pleasures is not a virtue; rather, it is a vice that leads us away from the balance that we seek in our lives.
The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved February 21, 2010 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org
One of the greatest debates that continues to rage on amongst theologians, as well as others, is in regards to the balance between the humanity and the divinity of the person of Jesus Christ (also known as Christology). This debate can be especially challenging in the Scripture passage of Matthew 26:36-46 where the reader finds Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. Many of the ancient and medieval theologians worked to explain away apparent humanistic characteristics seen in this section of the text, while more modern theologians seem to be more open to embracing these characteristics. While the ancient and medieval theologians may not have embraced the humanity of Jesus, the translations and backgrounds of the words “cup”, “grieved”, and “agitated”, along with the translation of the passage itself, the humanity of Jesus is not only present in the passage but also a necessity to the salvation of humanity through the sacrifice of Jesus. Simply put, for the salvation through death to be relatable for humanity, Jesus had to also be, at least in part, fully human as well as being fully divine.
I participated in an event my church held called the 30 Hour Famine. The purpose behind this event is to raise money for hunger in individual families or even whole countries around the world. People that participate in it fast for 30 hours straight with nothing but water and occasional juice to drink. From experience, it is not easy. You experience this faint feeling that you aren’t accustomed to. Your body tells you that you need food, and that your energy is running on empty. The emptiness and the feeling of surrender you experience fasting is like when your car is almost out of gas and it needs that teeny little extra push on the pedal to make it move. The 30 Hour Famine is not about being able to say “I can go 30 hours without eating.” It is about gaining perspective on what hunger feels like for so many people in all parts of the world, and empathy with all of those who experience it daily.
Bainvel, Jean. The New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York City: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15006b.htm (accessed September 23, 2011).