Saturday, April 11, 1998

For fasters, the manna of a sacred celebration is peace

By ERVIN DYER / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It was minutes past midnight when John Takyi went in search of God last Sunday.

Many would say he already knows God. After all, he is a Catholic priest at St. Winifred's Parish in Mt. Lebanon, Pa.

But for Holy Week, the Rev. Takyi has been seeking a closer relationship. To do that, he is spending his days and nights in hours-long prayer and meditation.

What he isn't doing, he said, is just as important.

He doesn't eat. At least not very much. Takyi is on a fast -- one limited to an evening snack of fruit, vegetables, juices and maybe a little bread.

"Fasting," said Takyi, "readies the mind and heart to enter into celebration with the Lord ... a way of deepening my participation."

It's a most ancient ritual. One that's practiced not only by Takyi but also by hundreds of thousands of other Catholics during Lent -- the 40-day period that leads up to Easter and ends Saturday.

As a symbolic link to the sacrifices of Jesus, church law requires Catholics to abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. And, on Good Friday, there's the additional restriction of not eating between meals.

But fasting is not seasonal for Takyi, a native of Ghana who's studying for a doctorate in spirituality at Duquesne University. "It's part of my normal diet in my relationship with God," he said.

For him, the fast nourishes an inner power. The clarity of purpose it provides, he said, gives him the vigor to minister to his parishioners.

Fasting plays a similar role in virtually all other faiths.

Wherever you find it, it's usually linked to prayer or meditation, and participants say it produces an intensity of faith that they don't normally feel.

The Rev. Sean Kealy, chair of Duquesne University's theology department, said fasting developed as a way to cleanse the body and prepare it for holy observances.

"It was also a way to achieve a heightened state of spirituality and consciousness," Kealy said. "A time when men would have visions and dreams" about God's direction for their lives.

Both Eastern and Western faiths teach that spiritual functions parallel physical functions. As our bodies thirst, so do our souls. As our bodies hunger, so do our hearts.

By denying themselves food, people who fast hope to purge themselves of the distractions of earthly living, the day-to-day temptations that can disconnect people from God.

Of course, for the newly initiated, fasting carries with it the risk of wanting food and thinking about it even more intensely than normal.

That was a very human tendency that Satan tried to exploit in the New Testament story of Jesus in the wilderness. During a 40-day fast by Jesus, Satan urges him to forgo his abstinence and turn stones into food. Steadfast, Jesus responds, "Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

"A reminder," Kealy said, "that God was all you needed. What we learn is that food is not the most important thing in life. Finding God's purpose is."

In a culture where food has such a strong grip on modern life -- from meetings to shopping to relaxing -- fasting may have declining significance for many believers.

Among Christians, Roman Catholics may have the most clearly defined fasting requirements -- on Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins; during Lent itself; and on Good Friday. Many Protestant denominations also have special services or appeals for spiritual discipline during these times, but don't stress fasting as much as the Catholics.

Denying yourself meals is no longer the only way to draw nearer to God, said Daniel Sack, a historian of American religion at Columbia Theological Seminary outside Atlanta. Self-denial now includes abstaining from such selfish behaviors as smoking and gossip.

Sack, who has studied the role of food in American religion, said that in today's society, fasting had been transmogrified into dieting -- a way to lose weight for very non-spiritual reasons.

When religious practices are subsumed into the popular culture, Sack said, "you'll see people reaching out for God's favor in other works. They'll volunteer in soup kitchens or shelters. What they're seeking is another dimension to exercise their spiritual discipline."

This is a world apart from 17th-century America. Then, the Puritan ministers in New England possessed a broad influence. They blamed famine, epidemics and other crises on unfaithfulness to God. To halt the punishment and regain favor, the community was ordered to fast.

And fast they did, Sack explained, "as often, if not more often, than feast."

But the Puritan emphasis on fasting could not hold as the population grew in size and diversity.

"It's far easier for a minister in Massachusetts to ask his community to fast, but much harder to ask a nation to fast, because it may not share the religious convictions that a smaller town or congregation may have."

Another major change came when the Second Vatican Council, ending in 1965, downplayed fasting for Catholics. The council removed numerous fast days from the calendar and scaled back the no-meat-onFriday rule to be a Lenten observance only.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the practice of fasting in some groups, though. Some evangelicals and other Protestants are starting to rediscover fasting as a way to address what many see as an increase in immorality. In recent years, they have called for national periods of prayer and fasting.

At Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Pittsburgh, the Rev. Dr. Josephine WhitelyFields asked her congregation to use the Lenten season to link fasting with prayer for special concerns for their church and community.

During Lent, the worshippers have gone without food from 6 p.m. Sunday until 6 p.m Monday. "Some things come by prayer and fasting," WhitelyFields said. "Just the prayer is not enough."

In Buena Vista's case, the 70 parishioners have been focusing their ritual on asking for both the financial and human resources needed to expand services to the diverse community in which they are located.

Fasting, of course, is not confined to Christianity. The Old Testament refers frequently to fasting, and Jews still fast on Yom Kippur.

In fact, said Rabbi Yisroel Miller of Poale Zedeck in Pittsburgh, on that Holy Day of Atonement, Jewish people are "commanded to afflict their souls," a rabbinic tradition meaning to fast.

Yom Kippur is so sacred that even those with medical problems often will abstain from food and water for the 25-hour observance.

For Orthodox Jews, there are five other fasts during the year. Each is an opportunity for the faithful to humble their souls before God and purge themselves of earthly arrogance.

Jewish tradition also called for fasting in times of danger and wars.

"During the Holocaust," said Miller, "there were solidarity prayers and fasting. It creates a special feeling of bonding and brings you together."

Fasting also is important to several American Indian and Eastern religions.

In Hinduism, which believes people's souls are reincarnated until they are finally liberated by spiritual enlightenment, the faithful are called on to fast -- but not required to do so. The practice is voluntary, and in modern India, varies widely among regions and individuals.

Women fast more than men, said Arvind Sharma, a New Delhi native who teaches religion at McGill University in Montreal, and they often focus the fasts on the well-being of their family and husbands.

The majority of Hindus also fast to mark the death of Mohandas Gandhi, or during "chaturmasya," the four-month rainy season, when Hindus see the avoidance of food as a way to purge the body of toxins, Sharma said.

Sharma said Hindus also fasted during certain key moments in life -- passage into adulthood, marriage and mourning.

The Muslim community three months ago ended its annual month of daytime fasting, Ramadan. The tradition is not only mandatory for Muslims but is one of the five pillars of Islam (The others are belief in God and Mohammed as his prophet; almsgiving; prayer and, if possible, a pilgrimage to Mecca).

During the fast, Muslims abstain not only from food but also from sexual relations from dawn to dusk.

The period is seen as "a total submission to God," said Zahid Mahmud, executive secretary of the Islamic Council of Greater Pittsburgh.

In the evenings during Ramadan, many mosques hold nightly potluck dinners, or families and friends will host small gatherings to mark "iftar," or the breaking of the fast.

While fasting can be good for the soul, it carries physical risks. After extended fasting, the skin and hair can become dry and lose color; muscles can weaken; and breathing and the heartbeat can become labored. But those effects occur only after several days of going without food.

"A 24-hour fast is fine for healthy people," said Madelyn Fernstrom, associate director of the UPMC Center for Nutrition. "But for people with diabetes or heart problems, it should be modified."

Also, she warned, because many medications need to be taken with food, some people have to eat.

Because he has practiced fasting for years, Takyi, the St. Winifred's priest, said he could tolerate its physical effects well. But when he first started going without food, he recalled, he easily lost his concentration and would shake from hunger.

While people can go without food for short periods, the absence of fluids is more serious, said Fernstrom. Going more than 24 hours without liquids can produce fatigue and dehydration. If a person plans to fast over several days, maintaining health gets trickier.

When a person cuts back on food for an extended period, "that's when the body turns the furnace down," said Fernstrom, by lowering its rate of metabolism -- the speed at which it turns food into energy. Also, blood sugar tends to drop, and there's increased dizziness.

After a while, the body actually begins to feed off itself. In women, it draws from the deposits of fats stored in their hips and in men, from the fat stored around their stomachs.

By Thursday, Takyi had not eaten a full meal in five days.

He is weary, and at times, a little dizzy. So why is he smiling?

"Once you start to fast," he said, "you love it for the peace and reconciliation it brings."

Takyi, 35, said he was using his fasting period this Holy Week to focus on managing both his full-time doctoral studies and his priestly duties. It gives him a feeling of gentleness and keeps him from being frantic or compulsive, he said.

This, clergy agree, should be the focus of a fast.

The idea is not to walk around in a state of gloomy pride, boasting of self-denial and suffering, but to focus on the feeling of transcending physical desire that can come from the practice.

Even Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, admonished against shallow piety.

"Do not look dismal like the hypocrites ... but when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by men but by your (God) who is in secret."

Takyi has followed that precept this week by awakening at sunrise and going alone into the dimly lighted chapel at St. Winifred, where he sits or kneels in prayer, reads the Bible or meditates.

"Some people see the denial as being violent with yourself," said Takyi. "But not me. You grow in fasting as you grow in prayer."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)