Lenten Fasting

Pax Christi offers many Lenten resources here, including reflections on fasting and prayers for fasting.

Reflections on Fasting

Fasting has always been an important part of our farm worker movement. We learned from Gandhi, and other spiritual leaders before him, the value of fasting for such personal purposes as preparation for a significant life event, atonement, and self-purification... We also learned from Gandhi that the value of fasting could be extended beyond the personal to the social: that a person who fasted and suffers for a much-needed societal change broader than his or her purposes could elicit from others the desire to share the suffering and thereby participate in eradicating a specific social injustice. ~ Cesar Chavez


Prayer for Fasting

All praise be yours, God our Creator,
As we wait in joyful hope
For the flowering of justice
And the fullness of peace.

All praise for this day.
By our weekly fasting and prayer,
Cast out the spirit of war, of fear and mistrust,
And make us grow hungry
For human kindness,
Thirsty for solidarity
With all the people of your dear earth.

May all our prayer, our fasting and our deed be done in the name of Jesus. Amen.

(Archdiocese of Chicago's Office for the Ministry of Peace and Justice)