NASHUA, New Hampshire (LifeSiteNews) — “Fasting is part of the good life, and fasting is joyful … [the] testimony of two thousand years of saints and Catholic tradition can lead to no other conclusion,” write prominent Catholic theologian Scott Hahn and star Swiss chef David Geisser.
Just in time for the Lenten season, The Lenten Cookbook, an impressive new Sophia Institute Press publication, combines profound theological history with delicious but abstinent recipes.
The authors note that “there are few Christian spiritual practices—the Lord’s Prayer comes to mind as an example—that are attested earlier or more universally than fasting.” Accordingly, “fasting, and prayerful self-restraint in food choices generally, doesn’t have to be either monastic or a few-times-a-year imposition,” the authors write. Rather, dietary discipline complements the “everyday arsenal for spiritual growth (and warfare) available to every Christian.”
In an insightful overview of fasting’s history, the book notes:
Fasting wasn’t invented by Christians (or Jews, for that matter) but is a universal human practice that the Lord and His Church have sanctified. Periodic, self-imposed limitations on food are attested in just about every culture as a means of supplicating or appeasing angry gods. We see it even in today’s secular culture, but the gods are those of health and wellness.
Particular to the Christian tradition, the Didache, a first-century Greek writing:
encourages weekly fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. This latter suggestion was meant to continue the habit of twice-weekly fasting from the Jews but to distinguish the followers of Christ by shifting the days from Monday and Thursday to Wednesday and Friday, the former commemorating the betrayal of Judas and the latter the Passion of Our Lord.
After the 1054 schism between the West European Catholic Church and the East European Orthodox Church, weekly fasting times became a further point of contention. “East and West argued over whether Wednesday (the betrayal of Judas) or Saturday (Christ in the tomb) should be the second weekly fast day,” the authors observe. This “question of Wednesday versus Saturday fasts was the topic of the quip of St. Ambrose that comes down to us as ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’” from the fourth century.
Historically, “fasting was meant to be not a minor inconvenience but a real sacrifice,” the Geisser and Hahn write while delineating its stringency:
All the ancient penitential dietary laws of the Church fall under the umbrella of xerophragia, a Greek work that means “dry eating.” This includes six foods forbidden for being from animals or particularly pleasing to the senses: flesh meat, fish meat, dairy, eggs, wine, and oil.
“The prohibition of eggs,” the authors note, “is the basis for the Easter egg tradition,” an example of how fasting has left its mark on history. Similarly, medieval Catholics obtained clerical dispensations from Lenten fasts through the performance of good deeds. As a result, during the building of the majestic cathedral in Rouen, France, the “glorious southwest tower was funded by dispensations, sold to wealthy patrons, to eat butter and milk during Lent,” a history immortalized in the name “Butter Tower.”
“Fasting, as a spiritual discipline, is much more about the heart than about the stomach,” Geisser and Hahn nonetheless conclude. “In denying ourselves the satisfaction of our bodily appetites, we become more aware of, and closer to, the spiritual reality of God,” they add. Sacrifices “give Him glory by demonstrating that we organize our lives around the reality of the triune God, not the gods of pleasure and power and worldly satisfaction.”
Fasting’s “sacrifice is essential to worship, which is, in turn, the pinnacle duty of the virtue of religion,” Geisser and Hahn note. This worship is the “justice that we owe to God as our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer—a debt that we can never repay but can approximate by offering the very best of ourselves to Him,” the authors add. Acts of penance like fasting “amount to a renunciation of the temporary goods of this world in favor of the eternal good of the world to come.”
Geisser and Hahn note the “paradox of Lent”: “We renew our attention to Jesus Christ, who should always and everywhere bring joy; but it is the Christ of the Passion who is before our eyes, whose suffering brings feelings of grief and shame.” In this world “suffering is unavoidable,” the authors add, but “by choosing to accept this deprivation, we open ourselves to the spiritual realities that make our suffering meaningful.”
Therefore, the “Lenten fast should be training our wills to rein in our unruly desires,” Geisser and Hahn write. They compare the discipline to a “physical workout: If we aren’t pushing ourselves to test our limits (within the bounds of prudence), we aren’t growing.” Being “thoughtful (and prayerful) … about something as basic [as] food is good training for thoughtfulness about other aspects of our lives.”
Such thought and prayer should accompany Christians year-round. “Every week we commemorate the life of Christ in miniature. Every Friday is a little Lent, or perhaps a little Good Friday. Every Sunday is a little Easter,” Geisser and Hahn observe. Advent in particular is also a “penitential season. Advent looks forward not just to the first coming of Christ at Bethlehem but to His second coming at the end of time.” Christians thus “focus on preparing ourselves in the spirit of His innocence and for His just judgment.”
Along with highly appealing, spiritually infused recipes (e.g., hot cross buns), The Lenten Cookbook offers considerable food for thought. For this and subsequent Lenten seasons, Geisser and Hahn provide considerable nourishment for both body and soul. Readers should indulge, not abstain.
David Geisser with Scott Hahn, The Lenten Cookbook, Sophia Institute Press, 226 pages, $29.95