Note: this article is written from my point of view, that is to say, as a progressive Catholic. If you feel uncomfortable with “religious” material, then feel free not to read on. If you belong to a tradition that includes the practice of fasting, then I think you can adapt some of my overtly Christian language to your faith and still find the article interesting.

Once upon a time, God’s people turned to God in two ways: through prayer and through fasting. Significantly, fasting was clearly and intrinsically connected to taking action in a wider sense:

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the throngs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your meal with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them. And not turning your back on your own (Isaiah 58 6-7).

Through Isaiah, God is calling his people to reach out to others; this passage vividly connects personal spiritual practices to a broader concern and response. Still, one might ask, that was the Hebrew Bible; what does the Gospel call us to do?

Oddly enough, that’s a fairly unusual question for Catholics to ask. If you look up “fasting and Catholic tradition” on Google, most of the hits in the first few pages have to do with specific regulations. When do we have to do it? What exactly is it? Can I have bread? Do I have to fast all day? What happens if I eat something?

In other words, we focus on what we might call the minutiae of fasting, putting the cart well before the horse. Before you learn how to do something, you need to understand why you are doing it.

We come out of a tradition that often wants to keep the spiritual… well, spiritual. We read spiritual books. We think spiritual thoughts. We rush through the practical tasks and responsibilities of life, labeling them secular and wishing to spend our mental time on the mountaintop.

The Gospel, however, is very clear: the spiritual life is a practical life. Nurse the sick, it tells us; clothe the naked, feed the hungry, comfort the afflicted. Sell all that you have and give to the poor. Go forth and preach to all nations. Turn the other cheek. Return good for evil. Love God, and your neighbor as yourself.

What it creates, in fact, is a blueprint for social justice. And of course at some level we all “believe” in social justice. We decry war, poverty, human trafficking. We’re beginning to understand the relationship between issues of sustainability and the life of all people on the planet.

But that’s so much easier in theory than in practice. In the abstract, we all love our neighbors. One remembers Charlie Brown’s famous line: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.” And yet that’s precisely the Gospel’s point: we don’t live our lives in the abstract. God has called each of us, individually, uniquely, to live in this life, this world… and help to build a better one.

And if we accept both those things, then it brings us back full-circle to the issue of social justice.

So you support your parish. You probably have a few charities to which you donate money. Maybe you volunteer at a soup kitchen or a thrift shop or a medical clinic. And maybe you even wish you could do more. But at the end of the day, that’s a scattershot approach, deciding on the basis of convenience or proximity or guilt how you will live out the Gospel’s mandates.

What other way is there? Well, Scripture answers that, too. The three “pillars” of the early Church were prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (in other words, giving to the poor, a significant part of any social justice program). These three pillars provide a logical current: prayer flows into fasting, and fasting flows into action. As the Church grew and changed, however, fasting became a lost discipline. It may have been standard operating procedure for God’s people in both the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament (in Matthew 6:16, Jesus didn’t say “if you fast”—he said “when you fast”), but because fasting has fallen out of popularity, we don’t recognize it as applicable to our lives. Yet, just like prayer, it can be a powerful tool, comfort, and catalyst for change.

And social justice, above all, demands change.

If we want change to happen, prayer and fasting are our first steps in the process, and if we’re serious about change, then the two are inseparable. Fasting is what enables prayer: it is an incessant reminder of the need for help and the need for action. Fasting is what sets the process in motion; it gives intentionality to our prayer. Growth and change never come from a place of comfort, and fasting keeps us uncomfortable, forcing us to think about consumption and privilege.

Fasting makes sense if it really chips away at our security and, as a consequence, benefits someone else. It is a sign of becoming aware of and taking responsibility for injustice and oppression, especially of the poor and the least, and is a sign of the trust we place in God and his providence. (Pope Francis)

We live in a culture of fast food, instant gratification, and self-centeredness. Fasting forces us to think intentionally about the foods we eat, the goods we consume, and the ways in which we are privileged. Fasting forces us to consider what it is like to go without.

And, honestly, what better way to understand those who are hungry than by... going hungry?

Of course, we can’t know anything about real hunger when we actually could eat whenever we wanted—we could fast for a week and never come close to the terror felt by those who don’t know when they might eat again. But that’s the real power of fasting: we don’t have to understand, because God is working through us, through our prayer and our hunger and our attempts to get it right.

Part of getting it right is to feel solidarity with our sisters and brothers who don’t have our privileges, those whose lives are truly miserable. In the United States alone, nearly seven million households don’t have enough to eat. Over three thousand human trafficking cases are reported every year. One in five girls and one in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse. Black males have an imprisonment rate seven times higher than white males, and the death penalty continues to be racially biased. On any given night, 633,782 people are experiencing homelessness. Low-income students are four times more likely to be part of the seven thousand who drop out of high school every day.

How can these statistics become real to us? How can they become actionable? If we free ourselves from the bonds of consumption, if we allow ourselves to sit with the realities of those who are suffering right on our doorsteps, to consider the ways that we are privileged, then fasting can flow into action. Fasting makes it a lot harder for us to remain passive, to sit idly by while others are in pain.   

Living with the discomfort of hunger is a reminder of the need to turn to God. The time we would normally spend shopping for, preparing, and consuming a meal is now free for other endeavors. The money that we would normally spend on food—probably anywhere from eight to twenty-five dollars a day—is freed up to help others.

And it focuses our energies. Fasting, you become more vulnerable, and as you develop the discipline, you’ll find that it opens your heart and your mind. And it stands as a witness to others, calling the community to serious reflection as well, calling us to solidarity and transformation. Another world is possible: the pages of the New Testament are practically singing with that promise, and fasting focuses attention on the transformation process that has to happen if another world is to become reality.

Prayer, fasting, and solidarity/charity are part of the effort to be intentional about our common humanity as God’s children, and to reach out to the Holy Spirit to guide us in creating change in the world.

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. (St. John Chrysostom)

Most of us are still learning how to fast. We don’t know how to adapt fasting to our limited physical capacity, or how to integrate it into our daily lives and routines. But at the end of the day, the details of your fast are less important than the fact of incorporating fasting into your life as regularly as you incorporate prayer. Just as you figure out what works for your prayer life, you need to figure out what works for your fasting and your social justice practices. Fasting could mean skipping a couple of meals a week, going without food for a weekend, or even living on a food-stamp budget for a week or a month.

Whatever you do, it will entail no longer taking food or money or shelter for granted. It will open your eyes, and it will open your heart, and once that has happened, you’ll never be able to see God’s people in the same way again.