Verbum Caro Factum Est

“Pope Benedict XVI said fasting is “a spiritual arm to do battle against every possible disordered attachment to ourselves”. This statement alone can be a subject of many hours of meditation. But the he did not stop there. He further commented that fasting is a “therapy to heal all that prevents [us] from conformity to the will of God”, and “assists us to mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbor”. The pope further lamented the fact that “in our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning” and has taken on a purely superficial trait as a means for weight loss. There can be no doubt that in our time, the Church, through the voice of its chief shepard, is calling the faithful back to lives of greater austerity, beginning with the restoration of fasting to its place of primacy.”