FOR MUCH OF my life I thought of Lent primarily as a season of personal piety, a self-contained period of reflection on individual sin and repentance. This penitential practice was limited in both scope and duration: It had little to do with others apart from me and God, and its impact did not extend beyond Easter. I approached a central component of Lent—the fast—like a trial, a test of willpower that pitted God against some “thing” I had given up, often a food (usually cheese or dessert). Much to my chagrin, in this personal test of will, God did not always win out. Overall, I was grateful and relieved each year when Lent ended.
Two years ago, things changed. As a dairy and meat aficionado who unexpectedly found herself a convert to vegetarianism and pondering veganism, I suddenly had a new relationship with chosen fasts. (The cause: Eating Animals, a book on factory farms written by Jonathan Safran Foer, collaborating with Jewish ethicist Aaron Gross. Read at your own dietary risk.) Vegetarianism helped me engage fasting as something internally motivated by ethical and spiritual concerns, rather than externally imposed. Participating in my church’s annual Daniel Fast later that year deepened this new experiential understanding. Based on Daniel 1 and featuring weekly 12-hour periods with no food, this fast helped me experience how fasting is not about willpower, but surrender. It taught me about hubris, humility, and moment-by-moment reliance upon God, which often involved other people.
These experiences reintroduced me to fasting as a meaningful mode of connection to God and the world. Rather than being solely between me and God, vegetarianism and the Daniel Fast engaged my relationships with others, whether through bouts of “hangry”-ness, gratefully received gifts of food, a newfound awareness of those whose encounters with hunger far surpass mine, or my ongoing attempts to relate differently to farmed animals. Instead of having a specified end date, fasting’s impact endured, changing my relationships with God and the world around me. Fasting became, in effect, a channel for justice. Through fasting, I learned to nourish a different kind of hunger.
In the Bible, fasts are tools of spiritual preparation that help individuals or groups address social or political crises or endeavors—for example, Esther’s plea before King Ahasuerus, Daniel’s captivity in the Babylonian court, and Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness to start his ministry. The prophet Isaiah writes: “Is this not the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?” Isaiah reminds us that fasting is not about piety, but liberation. As a spiritual practice righting relationship with God, fasting involves our relationships with others.
At a time when social and political crises of all sorts loom, Lenten fasts are vital tools for individual and communal spiritual health. Lent is an opportunity to acknowledge and address that sin—and salvation—is corporate. Borrowing from Mordecai, Lent is for such a time as this.
Jeania Ree V. Moore is a writer, United Methodist deacon, and doctoral student in religious studies and African American studies at Yale University.
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