The Anglican Church in Tasmania                                                             Search
	a healthy church...transformingLIFE
	Home      About      Contact us      News      Issues      Parishes      Prayer      Calendar      Youth      Resources

A call to prayer:   Bishop's Prayer Pilgrimage

	Photo Alex Wegman		Prayer and fasting Last month I wrote: Would you join me to daily pray and fast (in a way that is appropriate for you*) during the Bishop's Prayer Pilgrimage? I have since pondered on the issue of prayer and fasting. Have you ever prayed and fasted? Why fast? What is its significance? (Read Matthew 6:16-18) [The majority of the following is from the Annual Spring Harvest Conference - Skegness UK, 2001] Fasting has been out of favour for well over 100 years. From 1850 until the early 1950's, there was not one significant publication on the subject of fasting within Christianity! Why such a disfavour with fasting? Perhaps it was a reaction against some of the ascetic practices of the Middle Ages. Maybe it just fell off the preacher/teacher's agenda. Fasting has a significant place in the Bible. Other cultures and religions also exercise this discipline. Why should we fast in the first place? Because of a sense of call. We have heard an urging, a prompting, a sense of rightness from the Holy Spirit of what we are to do.   Jesus said When you give...when you pray...when you fast... He did not say If you give...if you pray...if you fast...   He was assuming that the children of the kingdom would be doing these things. Second, because it reveals the things that control us. We cover up what is inside us with food and other good things. When we fast, things such as anger, hostility, pride can come to the surface. This is good news for the children of the kingdom, because here is another area that we can be set free from; here is another deeply-ingrained habit that is destructive and harmful that we can we can be healed from. Another reason is that it gives us a sense of balance in life; it makes us more keenly sensitive to the whole of life, so that we are not obsessed by a consumer mentality. We engage in fasting because there is a need, an urgency. There are certain drastic situations that demand drastic means. The central idea in fasting is the voluntary denial of an otherwise normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity. What this means is that we don't just cease from eating, or preparing food for meals. Instead the time that is normally taken to prepare the meal, to eat, is devoted to the more important duty of prayer. Fasting from what? The normal means of fasting is food. *However there are other means; there are other ways of fasting:   From phones people It is not because we are anti-social; or because we dislike people. But because we love people, and when we are with people, we want to be a help to people rather than a distraction. It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness that I can truly love others. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection and filled with reverence for the solitude of others; solitude and silence teach me to love people for who they are, not for what they say. Thomas Merton Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Life Together entitles one chapter 'The Day Alone' and the next chapter 'The Day Together. Like Merton, he understood the importance of solitude and silence. We need to learn times when we can be alone, so that when we are with people we can be present with them. We can also fast from the media: radio, television, newspapers conversation... The tongue is the most powerful weapon of manipulation.   Silence is one of the deepest disciplines in the spiritual life, because it puts a stopper on all that self-justification. From our gluttonous consumer-culture that we find so comfortable; to be amongst Christ's favourites - the broken, the bruised, the dispossessed. Not to preach to them but to learn from them. * Fasting - if you think fasting may affect your health, or you are under the supervision of your doctor and are taking medication, do not undertake any form of fasting from food without consulting your doctor.