March 1, 2026 : Fasting
Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today and Forever ~
Last Sunday two different parishioners in two different communities asked me whether or not they needed to keep their Lenten resolution on Sundays or if those were days off. Basically, they wanted to know if their dietary resolutions needed to be upheld on Sundays during Lent or if they didn’t. What about those Lenten resolutions that aren’t dietary? My reply is that our Lenten resolutions are not mandatory, but gifts given to God. Whether we abide by them daily throughout Lent or not is up to us. Which gets to our motivation for making Lenten resolutions in the first place. We make them for the love of God and neighbor, as well as growth for ourselves in the virtues. If we don’t make religious resolutions, then we all miss out. Which leads me to the timeless religious discipline of fasting.
We see the practice of fasting from food for religious reasons in both the Old and New Testaments; even before God made His covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the Jewish people. And, of course, Jesus and his disciples fasted. We hear about that every year on the first Sunday in Lent when Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast, pray, and be tempted by the devil for forty days. Christians have been fasting for two thousand years.
As put by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Often, we show our love by sacrificing, by giving something up. Sacrifice, in its various forms, out of love for the Lord Jesus is a powerful action that can yield great graces. For these reasons, the bishops of the United States have encouraged Catholics to make every Friday of the year a day of self-denial and penitential witness in memory of the Lord’s ultimate sacrifice for us [on a Friday].”
Among the works of self-denial that the bishops have especially commended is abstinence from meat by free choice. Self-denial can also take the form of giving something up that we most enjoy, or committing ourselves to works of charity. More recently, the bishops have invited Catholics to consider fasting and abstaining from meat on Fridays out of a special concern for issues pertaining to life, marriage, and religious liberty. This is something we can all do together.
Fasting and abstinence unites us to the redemptive suffering and death of our Lord. "The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice," (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1438).
The current practice of fasting in this country, as set by our bishops, doesn’t include kids 14 and younger, adults 60 and over, or anyone where health reasons would preclude. For the rest of us, here’s what our bishops mean by fasting:
1. No meat, but fish and pretty much everything else is okay.
2. A person can eat one full meal each day, as well as two smaller meals if needed, but they are not to equal one full meal. [But for snacks, that sounds like how most people eat on a normal day. If that’s fasting, give me celibacy!]
Fasting expectations for Christians have changed dramatically in the last century compared to the previous nineteen. For the first nineteen centuries of the Church’s twenty centuries, fasting for religious reasons looked like this for those who were healthy enough.
Fasting in the first 19 Centuries of Christianity:
1. Water only – OR –
2. Water and bread only. If bread wasn’t available, then whatever the basic dietary staple was for that place i.e., rice, potato, root, etc., – OR –
3. When bread wasn’t enough to sustain sufficient strength to maintain responsibilities, then a single vegetarian meal.
4. The first 19 Centuries of Christian fasting did not include meat, fish, eggs, or dairy.
Fast days in the first 19 Centuries of Christianity included:
1. All Fridays except: During the Easter or Christmas seasons, and other religious feast days such as All Saints, Annunciation, etc., or weddings and other rare special occasions.
2. Fasting on Wednesdays as well as Fridays during Lent for those in religious orders and the pious.
3. Vegetarian throughout Lent. This is where the Easter egg thing came from – eggs aren’t part of a vegetarian diet and thus were saved up during Lent because chickens wouldn’t stop laying them.
Why did the Church in the 20th Century profoundly lighten up on fasting? Because we became wimps. Fortunately, we can fast like Christians did until the 20th Century. The choice is ours. I know from personal experience that fasting moves mountains; obtaining goals that are out of reach for mere mortals like us. It can also do wonders for our health too.
I close by including an article on the health benefits of fasting.
May Almighty God Bless You,
Fr. Thomas Nathe
We Were Wrong About Fasting, Massive Review Finds
https://www.sciencealert.com/we-were-wrong-about-fasting-massive-review-finds
By David Moreau, The Conversation
November 2025
Ever worried that skipping breakfast might leave you foggy at work? Or that intermittent fasting would make you irritable, distracted and less productive?
Snack food ads warn us that "you're not you when you're hungry", reinforcing a common belief that eating is essential to keep our brains sharp.
This message is deeply woven into our culture. We're told constant fueling is the secret to staying alert and efficient.
Yet time-restricted eating and intermittent fasting have become hugely popular wellness practices over the past decade. Millions do it for long-term benefits, from weight management to improved metabolic health.
This raises a pressing question: can we reap the health rewards of fasting without sacrificing our mental edge? To find out, we conducted the most comprehensive review to date of how fasting affects cognitive performance.
Why fast in the first place?
Fasting isn't just a trendy diet hack. It taps into a biological system honed over millennia to help humans cope with scarcity.
When we eat regularly, the brain runs mostly on glucose, stored in the body as glycogen. But after about 12 hours without food, those glycogen stores dwindle.
At that point, the body performs a clever metabolic switch: it begins breaking down fat into ketone bodies (for example, acetoacetate and beta-hydroxybutyrate), which provide an alternative fuel source.
This metabolic flexibility, once crucial for our ancestors' survival, is now being linked to a host of health benefits.
Some of the most promising effects of fasting come from the way it reshapes processes inside the body. For instance, fasting activates autophagy, a kind of cellular "cleanup crew" that clears away damaged components and recycles them, a process thought to support healthier ageing.
It also improves insulin sensitivity, allowing the body to manage blood sugar more effectively and lowering the risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes.
Beyond that, the metabolic shifts triggered by fasting appear to offer broader protection, helping reduce the likelihood of developing chronic diseases often associated with overeating.
What the data showed
These physiological benefits have made fasting attractive. But many hesitate to adopt it out of fear their mental performance will plummet without a steady supply of food.
To address this, we conducted a meta-analysis, a "study of studies", looking at all the available experimental research that compared people's cognitive performance when they were fasting versus when they were fed.
Our search identified 63 scientific articles, representing 71 independent studies, with a combined sample of 3,484 participants tested on 222 different measures of cognition. The research spanned nearly seven decades, from 1958 to 2025.
After pooling the data, our conclusion was clear: there was no meaningful difference in cognitive performance between fasted and satiated healthy adults.
People performed just as well on cognitive tests measuring attention, memory, and executive function whether they had eaten recently or not.
When fasting does matter
Our analysis did reveal three important factors that can change how fasting affects your mind.
First, age is key. Adults showed no measurable decline in mental performance when fasting. But children and adolescents did worse on tests when they skipped meals.
Their developing brains seem more sensitive to fluctuations in energy supply. This reinforces long-standing advice: kids should go to school with a proper breakfast to support learning.
Timing also seems to make a difference. We found longer fasts were associated with a smaller performance gap between fasted and fed states. This might be due to the metabolic switch to ketones, which can restore a steady supply of energy to the brain as glucose runs out.
Performance in fasted individuals tended to be worse when tests were conducted later in the day, suggesting fasting might amplify the natural dips in our circadian rhythms.
The type of test also mattered. When cognitive tasks involved neutral symbols or shapes, fasting participants performed just as well, or sometimes even slightly better.
But when tasks included food-related cues, fasted participants slipped. Hunger doesn't create universal brain fog, but it does make us more easily distracted when food is on our minds.
What this means for you
For most healthy adults, the findings offer reassurance: you can explore intermittent fasting or other fasting protocols without worrying that your mental sharpness will vanish.
That said, fasting isn't a one-size-fits-all practice. Caution is warranted with children and teens, whose brains are still developing and who appear to need regular meals to perform at their best.
Similarly, if your job requires peak alertness late in the day, or if you're frequently exposed to tempting food cues, fasting might feel harder to sustain.
And of course, for certain groups, such as those with medical conditions or special dietary needs, fasting may not be advisable without professional guidance.
Ultimately, fasting is best seen as a personal tool rather than a universal prescription. And its benefits and challenges will look different from person to person.
