Aquinas on Fasting

 

Aquinas on Fasting

The times fixed for fasting by the Church are well chosen. Fasting has two objects in view :

 

(i) The destruction of sin, and

 

(ii) the lifting of the mind to higher things.

 

The times self-indicated for fasting are then those in which men are especially bound to free themselves from sin and to raise their minds to God in devotion. Such a time especially is that which precedes that solemnity of Easter in which baptism is administered and sin thereby destroyed, and when the burial of Our Lord is recalled, for we are buried together with Christ by baptism into death (Rom. vi. 4). Then, too, at Easter most of all, men s minds should be lifted, through devotion to the glory of that eternity which Christ in his resurrection inaugurated.

 

Wherefore the Church has decreed that immediately before the solemnity of Easter we must fast, and, for a similar reason, that we must fast on the eves of the principal feasts, setting apart those days as opportune to prepare ourselves for the devout celebration of the feasts themselves.