ABOUT FASTING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 46, 18 March 1898, Page 3

ABOUT FASTING.

A non-Catholic from Oamaru sends us " for publication " a letter signed '• Truth-seeker." The letter is a series of queries regarding certain Catholic practices. The first refers to the origin and institution of the Lenten fast. A brief reply might be given. An adequate reply involves a sufficient statement of the whole Catholic position regarding fasting. Such a statement is appropriate to the present season. It may also prove instructive to our readers and perhaps interesting to '• Truth-seeker."' The word "' fasting " is througout taken in the wide sense, implying any voluntary limitation of food, whether of quantity or kind, for religious motives. The Scripture references are, for the most part, from the A.V. or the R.V. of the English Protestant Bible. IN HEATHENEbSE. lii reading the records of history and of travel, it is curious to note how and widespread is the custom of voluntary fasting as a religious observance. A distinguished Protestant writer says it was •'a recognised institution with all the more civilised nations, especially those of Asia, throughout historic times." Many centuries before the birth of Christ, Buddha fasted and did penance for six years after his '• Ureat Renunciation " Short Chapters on Jiuddhhm, by the Protestant Bishop Titcomb). The Hindu sacred book I'ai'/ihu orders twelve-day fasts, which are observed to our day by Buddhibts and Brahmans. The prophet Daniel (Dan. vi., 18) bears witness to the fasts of the ancient Babylonians ; and Jonas (iii., G, 7, 8) records the rigorous penitential fast of the Ninevites of old. The Parsees held solemn fasts ;so did the ancient Egyptians, in honour of Isis. In Tibet both schools of Lamaites fast to this day, as do the modern Siamese at each full moon. In his recent book, Anot hrr China. Monseigneur Reynaud tells of Chinese pagan devotees who fast from wine, fish, and meat for twenty to fifty years, or for a whole life-time (pp. 3J, SI). Lane, in his Arab Soriit // (p. 14), tells us that the Mahommedans take neither food nor drink from daybreak to sunset during iho whole of the month

of Ramadan. The practice of fasting is said to have been introduced into ancient Rome by Mama Pompilius, its second king, nearly seven centuries before Christ. Among the ancient Greeks, as Mahaffy and others tell us. fasting was on one of the preparations for the celebration of the mysteries of Eleusis (Hamblex in Greece, cd. 1892, p. 188). Aristotle tells how the Spartans of old fasted and prayed to obtain viotories for their armies. Curiously enough, the " Pakeha Maori " author of Old Aew Zealand (p. 1 49) describes an exactly Bimilar war-custom as prevailing among the Maoris— even the smoking of a pipe being forbidden. la the New World the Spanish conquerors found fasting practised among the Indians of Mexico and Peru. THE OLD LAW. Bearing in mind these and many other such facts as might be enumerated, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the practice of fasting either formed part of God's primitive revelation to man, or that ita propriety and usefulness may be discovered by the unaided light or human reason. However, we are not left to reason alone. Voluntary fasting has been approved by God himself as a means of grace, and we have plentiful evidence of its use both in the Old and the New Testament. The Jewish law provided for a true ecclesiastical fast in the Catholic sense of the word — that is a limitation as to the kind, and also as to the quantity of food that might be taken. The restriction as to kind began in Eden, with God's solemn prohibition of the fruit of a certain tree, and, later on, covered the wide range of things which, in the Mosaic law, were termed '■ unclean." The limitation as to quantity of food was prescribed in the twentyfour hour fasts, such as that of the tenth day of the seventh month (Tisri), in the other five compulsory fasting days added later on, and in the occasional fasts proclaimed by Jehosaphat (2 Chron. xx., 3), by Ezra (viii., 21), by Joel, at God's command {Joel ii., Hi), etc., etc. The prophet Jonah is witness that penitential fasting moves God to mercy (iii., 5, etc.). Numberless passages in the Old Testament show that the Jewish people fasted in their bereavements, in public calamities, in sign of sorrow for sin, to obtain special help from heaven, and to be free to commune more intimately with God, as did Daniel (x., 3), and as Moses and Eli.xs did in their miraculous fast of forty days (Kvod. xxiv , 2S ; I. Kinys xix., 8). To the present day the Jewish people fabt certain whole days, besides sundry half-days, anniversaries, etc., including, curiously enough, the anniversary of their wedding-days.

(Continuation ncvt well.)