How Do Catholics Fast?

yeah I'm father Mark Mary I'm brother Elijah come on Jack you Mulligan we're Franciscan friars Jackie help start fixing the fryers I'm good to be back with you we talked about last week introduced fasting kind of went in on the spiritual benefits of it this week we're gonna kind of unpack like what like what we're actually like what it looks like yeah what do we do part of the thing is you can if you type in intermittent fasting in YouTube or Google or whatever you get a ton of hits so it's kind of a little bit all the rage right now as far as like just from the perspective of like diet that people have but but we're going to get into more just the nuts and bolts of that we talked about the spiritual benefits in the last in the last session so we'll kind of bring that all together and say from the Catholic perspective this is this is what we're looking at yeah and so in my practice what I see oftentimes is that people have got issues and that the when I work with somebody I'm similar to probably how you approach listening to a confession or or spiritual direction perhaps I'm really looking for the holes and the gaps to fill in and to really find the root cause so oftentimes when we experience things like headaches or digestive issues or fatigue or brain fog that's just a symptom of the root cause and so what I see over and over and over again is that the root cause often starts in our gut and so our gut is our second brain I actually think it's our first brain and that this is our second brain but all the good stuff happens in our gut and it's brought up to our brain so if serotonin dopamine that's all produced in our our guts and one thing that fasting helps is create space for digestive healing and and it rids our body of toxins so when we take space from eating and allow time for for fasting our bodies literally get to to cleanse and that's something that people ever do in their lives for you no more than 12 hours so let's say they eat dinner around 8 p.m. they're probably eating breakfast by 8 a.m. or even sooner one of the quotes I mentioned earlier that I really use as the foundation of my practice is by st. Augustine which is treat your body as if you're going to live forever and treat your soul as if you're going to die tomorrow and so if we're looking at the physical aspects of fasting it's definitely going to help us live quote-unquote forever what would you say the age was that you said was promised by fasting st. Anthony lived to like 106 years old so get a lot of fast yeah this relief of fatigue you know I had Lyme disease I still have Lyme disease but I was really healing from it a few years ago and I accidentally had to fast for a doctor's appointment that was at 5:00 p.m. to get my blood drawn and I struggled in the morning I definitely didn't feel well but afternoon and up until my appointment was the best I had felt in almost a year and that was because I accidentally fasted and I had fasted in the past but since being sick I had not thinking that I needed to fuel my body and it sped up my healing process more than any other remedy that I tried one of the first things that I see people experienced with just a few days of fasting is that they have better sleep and more energy and this is a very fine line between men and women men tend to do better with longer fasts and more fasting where women generally do better with less hours of fasting but they can they can do it consistently so we'll kind of jump in to maybe some of the different types of fasting when I talk about the different types of fast it's important for you to tune in and and really question why you're drawn to the invitation too fast in general but also why one particular fast I mentioned might be desirable to you and so understand that yeah what would be examples like just hit hit at home like good motivation bad motivation so a positive motivation would be for for the intention of potentially ridding brain fog but also for a doing that with a private prayer intention for somebody outside himself a negative motivation would be sheerly to lose weight or aesthetically look better part of the movement of fasting is like I'm reducing others like so it's like pope benedict xvi has a line that loves an exodus for me to you yeah like so we're trying to get more others standard like and if if our fasting is really like kind of a selfish diet just for me like it has the opposite right yeah it becomes cold to the body really quick like it's all about my own image whereas it should have the opposite effect of making me more conscious of like how present God is how much he's calling me to give him myself and really to mortify which means put to death like my inordinate desire for my own immediate gratification and my own self and etc so losing the weight could be like a byproduct of for sure yes definitely something I see that's frequent result of fasting but it's it shouldn't be the main focus point my main catalyst for deciding to to implement fasting in your life yeah yeah so some different types of fasting would be a 24 hour fast and that would look like you're eating every day still but that would look like finishing dinner or let's say tonight at 6 and then not eating again at all until tomorrow night at 6 p.m. and when you when you eat again when you reintroduce food you're just having a simple meal so you're not making up for the lost meals that that that you didn't have and and you're certainly not over indulging there's a lot of different science on what to have as far as a reintroduction that might be a little long for this video but the the quick and basic part of it is that you want to eat whole natural real food I once heard that if your grandmother can recognize the food and pronounce it then it's a real food right so fruits and vegetables things like that one of the most popular fast I think that we see nowadays is the sixteen eight whereas sixteen hours of fasting and then an eight hour eating window and that's something that I see people practice daily and see a lot of health benefits so say that you skip breakfast and then you start eating around noon and then you you stop eating by 8:00 p.m. and so that's relatively easy to implement in into a lifestyle where you're still conducive with with the the goings of the world but you're still kind of creating this space in the morning especially if it's it's kind of paired with prayer and morning prayer and mass it's really really beautiful I see a lot of people who will fast on Sundays before Mass and so they go to a morning mass fast through mass and then had their first meal to literally break bread with a family which which is something traditionally that used to happen that doesn't happen you know regularly anymore so there's the 24-hour fast then there's the 16-8 fasting definitely is a stressor on the body so if stress is really high in our lives fasting physically fasting abstaining from food may not be the best idea and so that's why I kind of introduce these virtues of healing because awareness has to be there so if it's causing additional stress there's a difference between suffering and stress so it's going to be uncomfortable regardless but we really have to tune in to understand is this creating more stress in my body and having a negative effect on me which would result in things like anxiety and fatigue those are not benefits of fasting and that's not a result of a healthy fast now well you feel a little bit fatigued while you're in the fast certain way but it shouldn't be resulting for a long time after that and then there's different ways to fast with just less food but brother Elijah and I have had this conversation before we're in our experience we've actually done better and felt better with just completely abstaining from food rather than simply having bread and water or just a let's say a fruit and vegetable fast that tends to spike your blood sugar and kind of put you on this mood rollercoaster blood sugar roller coaster and another benefit of fasting is really helping with insulin sensitivity and maintaining our blood sugar so it's it's not something that I think sometimes having less is actually harder it definitely keeps us hungry but I think the body kind of receives a little bit of fuel and then wants even more it is an option but I would guess and and even predict that if you were to try that that you would end up actually having a harder time whether rather than if you just only had that water we've heard about the spiritual benefits of it we've heard a little bit about the like that just the natural biological benefits of fasting like word away where do we actually start yeah yeah I think a good place to start is to pray first of all so just to have a discerning attitude with it just like when you're trying to figure out like a daily schedule for prayer like what we call an or REM you pray about that you discern it where does where's the Lord inviting me to pray when am I going to be most effective and attentive to his presence to what he's doing a lot of people like the morning or the evening but those are all questions that you ask when you're trying to come up with like a daily prayer schedule same thing with fasting is like you know do I want to have am i being called to have like a weekly schedule of fasting you know should I be fasting one day a week and I find that like beginning with one day a week is like a good testing ground to see like what works with my body what what does well and then before I begin like increasing it from there so I just test like okay I'm gonna try one day a week to do 16 hours of fasting and 18 hours of like the feeding window so things like that so like testing it asking those questions in prayer so I think the first thing is to is to pray and if you have a spiritual director that's the right place to to do that if you don't then a trusted friend who you feel you know is a little bit further along in the journey and is fasting themselves a priest religious or just a layperson who you know is is living the faith and is a bit of a mentor for you that you can kind of confide in and bounce it off of so that's a good place to start is just prayer discernment spiritual direction and like cuz and what I would be looking for somebody came to me with daily desire to kind of go a little bit more intense with fasting is its number one just checking the motivation thread sure it's not like it's not like a pure sort of like worldly asceticism yeah right like I want to do something right hard and like just just to do something you know you're like flexing spiritual muscle yeah exactly that's kind of where awareness comes in is like really understanding if you feel this call and invitation to fasting and I just had a 24-hour fast and the response was oh I can do that right away and maybe do two days put the brakes on because we need to start slowly and what what brother Elijah said was with perfect is maybe just starting off with potentially just skipping breakfast one day one day a week and then the next week you know our lady calls us to fast on Wednesdays and Friday so potentially aligning our fast with intention on these specific days where we could start with fasting from breakfast then potentially the next week breakfast and lunch and simply having dinner but it has to be something that you slowly do and that's truly aligned and you know as we know sometimes the answers come really quickly but sometimes the Lord is a little bit slower to reveal what he's asking of us and how he's asking of us and so creating just a little bit of space for that by not eating breakfast and and inviting him into more prayer time will certainly reveal that over time so if even just in a month you take one or two days a week where you skip breakfast alone that is a great way to start fasting and then also you mentioned it is that fasting it there's a certain level of it stress it brings to the body which can also happen to sort of like the powers of the soul and so again like spiritually we want to make sure you're kind of at like a healthy enough place mm-hmm that this kind of privation doesn't make you kind of particularly vulnerable descent right yeah exactly yeah you have to be so like just fasting on its own it has to be coupled with prayer and so like if you're if you're not at a point where you're praying on a daily basis you know which by that I mean like quiet time with the Lord for at least like 20 minutes half an hour every day you know then then you you want to be a little bit more cautious and you want to maybe couple if I'm gonna if I'm gonna fast from breakfast for example for this week instead of eating breakfast I'm gonna take that 20 minutes and pray silently so that or I'm gonna go to Mass and spend 10 minutes after Mass and Thanksgiving for the Eucharist you know so it has to be coupled with that so there that's that ad discernment piece where it's okay what am I called to do or test with the fasting and what what does that look like for my prayer life but I I would say this like I think sometimes because we don't want to do it because it's uncomfortable and because we generally we generally like to be comfortable like where we're at we can come up with a million reasons why you know maybe maybe you shouldn't but ultimately I think it's one of those things that once you step into it and you try it you know prudently etc it's not gonna be perfect you're gonna make mistakes and you're gonna learn from that and that prudence will increase where you recognize what's the right amount for me and what's the Lord asking but ultimately if the desire is there the father has placed that good desire on your heart like if the desire is good it is too fast in order to create more space for him to love him to die to self etc then he's going to he doesn't put the desire there to not satisfy it you know he's a good father so so every good desire holy desire that he puts on our heart he wants to be the fulfillment you know and he wants to bring it about so so I think yes caution but also yes coraggio you know courage like go for it be not afraid all right so we've prayed about it we've talked somebody about it the desires there yeah I think clearance with a medical practitioner is definitely something that we should do especially if you're if you're doing it for physical healing I would definitely consult a physician about that and then I think it's really getting unclear on intention right so really saying okay I know I want to do this to create intimacy with the Lord I know I may want to do this for physical healing but I want to come outside of myself and offer this fast up for somebody else for the intention of something outside of myself so you know kind of praying about the fast seeking guidance and permission to do so really gaining clarity on length and purpose of the fast and then it's grabbing and ability partner yep and just like we would in in inviting somebody into our faith into our prayer life it actually is a really beautiful invitation to invite somebody else into practice fasting with us you know and usually the hardest part of the fast which is sometimes at the end is when the most beautiful fruits come and so it's when you're pushing through those last four hours and sitting in prayer and kind of going through the agony in the garden what it feels like it's it's just the most beautiful fruits from that time and that's where we're the most tempted to come out of the fast and and kind of talk ourselves into it's okay to eat it's okay to to you know come out of this and so really having accountability there prayerfully also to to hold you committed to what you've just descend to do just a word that kind of comes to mind is be still and know that I am God from psalm 46 and fasting has that effect of making our bodies still and I think that this is one aspect that kind of the world when it comes to intermittent fasting and water fasting and all of the rage or whatever missus is they kind of see it as like okay I'm fasting so I get more physical energy so I can do more and we're saying okay let's let's take the the energy that we experience biologically from fasting and let's order it towards God towards love towards intimacy and that requires that that being still before the Lord that we might know that He is God so beautiful we're gonna pray about it we're gonna talk to spiritual mentor spiritual director yep dr. Clarence get a partner get somebody in it with you and pair it with an intention and pair it with an attention and then go committed be beast be smart but like mmm-hmm what's the forty seven karate oh yeah it sounds cool alien alright we thank you for watching brother Elijah Jackie beautiful thank you so much yes you again next week god bless your peace

Channel: Ascension Presents

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Keywords: how do catholics fast?, catholic, fasting, prayer, jesus, christianity, ascension presents, fast, catholicism, christian, holiness, devotion, religion, virtue, fasting (religious practice), holy, catholic church, franciscan friars of the renewal, franciscan friars, fr mark mary, jackie mulligan, catholic fasting, intermittent fasting, dopamine, seratonin, how do Catholics fast, types of fasting, private prayer intention, benefits of fasting, Jackie Mulligan, reform wellness, CFRs on fasting

Id: kfN1aCTzAeQ

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019