St. Irenaeus gives us clues about the origins of a pre-Easter fast. The church felt strongly that, in preparation for baptism and ministry, fasting is a good and necessary practice. So, in preparation for the day of Easter, where the church would participate in recognizing many of these monumental moments, they would fast. Taking from the life of Jesus, the church encouraged a 40-day fast.

This fast did not happen in the way you may presume. We often think of fasting as having no food, and the early church certainly was not expecting people to not eat for forty days. Rather, the church would use this time period to eat only one meal a day, eating a single meal after 3 p.m. This meal did not include meat, fish, or dairy.

The Council of Nicaea solidified the practice of Lent, and it was Pope Gregory I who made the current 46-day version of Lent, starting on Ash Wednesday, and making every Sunday a feast day.

Over time, the church relaxed the strictness of this time of fasting. The one-meal restriction became an ideal rather than a practice due to the difficulty of being good laborers on an empty stomach. What has replaced fasting is a more general sentiment of giving something up. Today, a common “fast” during Lent would be from chocolate, soda, or social media. These are worthy aims and seek to better personal health and also strengthen our relationship with God in a way that the early church would have intended, though certainly not meeting the high standard of discipline first displayed by those early leaders.

The Protestant church has many valid critiques of Lent that have long made Lent a practice worth avoiding. Jesus himself never gave instruction on a season of fasting and never expressed that we should mimic his own fast in preparation for ministry. To institute this style of fast, then, seems to be rooted in works-based righteousness, stealing from the participant a recognition of the grace of Christ. The influential preacher and theologian Charles Spurgeon goes as far as saying that it is our “duty to reject the traditions of men”. By grace, we have freedom in our walk with Christ, unburdened by the spiritual laws created by humankind.

In reflection of the Protestant development, the question is less about whether or not they are right, but rather is the season of Lent nonetheless good for those who voluntarily participate? Not that we should institute a rule of Lent in our churches today, but did the early church understand something in their regular practice of fasting that we, who refuse to fast out of claims of freedom, miss something true and beautiful? In our pride of the freedom of Christ, have we lost the discipline that centuries of Christians practiced? And in our pursuit of freedom have we missed out on the bonds created in community by voluntarily suffering together?

My argument in the remainder of this writing is that by abandoning Lent, and ignoring fasting, we have abandoned an ancient practice that can be a tool for discipline, something desperately needed in the modern American church. That is not to say that you are saved by fasting or that Lent will lead towards righteousness, but it is to say that it can be a valuable experience in understanding our own person especially in relation to God. As you will experience, fasting is a great teacher, and without such a physical experience such lessons are hard to be known.

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