We read: “Jesus ate nothing for forty days, and He was hungry.” [Spanish]
Now, we can give up Snickers Bars for Lent, or drinking wine, or playing video games—it’s all good. The Lord rewards every little sacrifice we make for Him. But, if we really want to keep Holy Lent, we have to do something other than just a nifty little appropriate penance. We have to contemplate those words, long and hard. He was hungry.
A couple years ago I had a conversation with someone who had just had sudden heavy-duty brain surgery. He could not talk. He could not hold his head up. He vomited everything they tried to get down his gullet. He could not use his hands. His head hurt as if there were no other reality on the face of the earth.
Forty days of fasting had gotten Christ to a physical state like that.
One time when I was hiking, I encountered a dehydrated man who had not had water or any liquid for at least 48 hours. He literally was like Christ on the cross, Who—though He had spikes nailed through His hands and feet, and a crown of thorns pressing into His temples—had only one physical complaint. Jesus considered none of His bodily suffering on the cross worth mentioning, except the one desperate need that He articulated when He cried out… “I thirst.”
This lost hiker that I met suffered thirst like Christ suffered on the cross. But the cross wasn’t the first time the Lord thirsted like that. He also suffered it in the desert, during the first Lent.
My point is: It’s good to give up little things, like a second cup of coffee, or listening to music. But the real point of Holy Lent is: for us to encounter the reality of Christ’s human body in a state of desperation unto death. Forty days of fasting doesn’t just make you hungry. It makes you desperate. I’m not telling you to fast like this! Please don’t! But we must contemplate it.
The true physical desperation of the fasting Christ: It can be found in hospital rooms, in prisons, in rehabs, in the corners of the world where war and cruelty have desiccated the soil. In those places, a fast like Christ’s fast is actually underway right now.
Now, why must the Lord drag us into such unpleasantness as this? Does He despise or dislike us? No. To the contrary. He wants us to find the sure footing by which we can answer this question: Where do we stand, you and I, in the relationship that unites the divine Father with the divine Son? Where do we belong, in that soberly syncopated everlasting festival dance of eternal triune love?
As we will read next Sunday, God the Father Almighty’s Word to us is: I love My Only-Begotten Son! The Son Who thirsted like a delirious lost desert hiker. The Son Who hungered for food with all the physical vehemence that can overtake a man trying to dry out in a drunk tank.
There is nothing dainty about the physical extremes that the Son of God suffered in His Body. He didn’t just feel like He was going to die of hunger and thirst during His fast in the wilderness. He knew He was going to die of asphyxiation, when His diaphragm ran out of cellular ATP and He could no longer distend His lungs to breathe, three years later.
The eternal Son has enjoyed the eternal love of the eternal Father from before the world began. Neither the Father nor the Son lacked anything. But the triune God is generous, infinitely generous.
So the Son embraced our utter physical desperation. We human beings, desperate unto death–hungry, thirsty, sick, mortal. He embraced us, right there, in our desperation. Right at the moment where we cry out, Abba, Father!
And when we cry out to Him like the Son did, the Father replies—of you, and of me: “This is My chosen son. This is my chosen daughter. This is the one I live to love.”
Father Mark White Blog 
Thank you, Fr. Mark, for this a wonderful commentary on how to approach Lent! Contemplating Christ, particularly in his suffering, in the extremes He goes through to pursue us is so fruitful in living a lively faith full of zeal for God’s church! And looking for Christ in those who are truly suffering in our world is a beautiful way to experience Christ.
Some encouraging words on food fasting… don’t underestimate the power of actually food/drink fasting, maybe not for 40 days if you aren’t a regular at this sort of thing. The time we generally spend thinking about food, purchasing food, preparing food, eating food, cleaning up after we eat food can be redirected to other activities like participating in some social justice activity or corporal work of mercy, visiting our Lord in an church or adoration chapel, or sitting and contemplating the suffering of Christ from the comfort of our own home – that’s an extra hour and a half on any given day that we might choose to actually food/drink fast (not including thinking, purchasing, and planning – https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/news/2015/07/guess-how-much-time-you-spend-eating-on-an-average-day). And the dollars you might save on skipping a few meals can be dropped into the poor box or some other social concerns fund. If/when those little hunger pangs come or we walk by the pantry or refrigerator and automatically open it without a thought or drive by a food establishment and smell the wafting aroma of something or other, we have the perfect opportunity to “raise [our] mind and heart to God” (CCC 2559) in thanksgiving that we CAN fast, in solidarity with those who truly suffer, and with the hope that God can use our small offering in some way.
With the internet, there is tons of information available on the benefits of fasting and various ways of fasting. Many countries, cultures, and religions integrate food/drink fasting into their regular calendars, just as Catholics do, with our light Friday fast with abstinence from meat during Lent. As a child, my parents observed abstinence from meat every Friday of the year (old rules) and water only fasts on Fridays during Lent. They didn’t hesitate to include their children in this practice regardless of our ages.
We have been taught to fear lack of food. Our leaders have gone from recommendations of 3 meals per day to six “smaller” meals. And yet our country is burdened with every kind of illness – to which our medical community generally responds with more pharmaceuticals, rarely asking their patients to make lifestyle changes, regardless of the positive evidence-based results of fasting and food choice management.
Pray well!