What is the point of inviting Christians to fasting and prayer, how did Pope Leo do for the day of August 22? Today in the world certainly does not believe much of the effectiveness of fasting and prayer, our contemporaries do not understand it. But even among believers, the opulence of life is often accompanied by a weakness of faith, so there is little confidence in prayer and even less in an effectiveness of fasting. Yet the Church does not recommend fasting and prayer simply because this belongs to its spiritual tradition, but it does it first of all because it is the great recommendation repeated several times by Jesus to his disciples. First of all, Jesus asked to pray, to pray insistently, without tinging himself, even when you do not see the exiuration. It must be prayed in the certainty that the Father listens to, that the Lord collects the cry of the poor and miserable, collects the tears of those who suffer and reply, will respond with his strength and love.
Praying is not an easy operation, yet it must be done insistently: praying why there is peace, so that the Holy Spirit illuminates the minds of the rulers and those who are in power, because the Holy Spirit inspires thoughts of peace in all human beings, because they stop building weapons in the illusion that by building weapons can defend themselves. Peace is a peace that is always disarmed, which is born not to build weapons but from those who undress weapons, from those who show up in its mildness and mansuetiness without opposing the strength, violence, even if it has received violence on themselves by the enemy. Praying, the New Testament teaches us, it is “intercede”: we are attentive to this word, it comes from Latin inter-cedo“I take a step between …”. So prayer is not simply a verbal action, it is not a speaking to God by multiplying the words, but it is essentially “taking a step between …”, entering the situation. Prayer must bring us where there is a need for mercy, compassion, people who do work of peace and justice. Intercede means “entering …” to be next to the brothers who suffer, to the brothers who live injustice, to be on their side and make a work of peace, justice, solidarity, having care of the brothers.
Intercede is a serious thing, it is not simply multiplying words. It is essentially, I repeat, take a step in situations, between difficult situations where there is suffering, violence, war, and make our contribution for peace, justice, consolation. Then prayer becomes a vegetable garden, not an escape from reality, not a speaking that has no consequences, but something that changes and converts firstly ourselves and leads us to act differently. As for fasting, there is certainly a vision of fasting that is not the Christian one. Fasting is not mortification, it is not a suffering end in itself. God does not ask us for fasting so that we suffer, so that we mortify ourselves, so that we suffer … No, fasting is something that we must decide to imprint in our bodies what we live, what we feel with our meat. Because those who fast do not live an ideological, intellectual operation, but feel the bullshit of the stomach, feel the thirst for the throat, and in that situation it therefore imprints its capacity of being in need, which must invoke water, food, begging to the others and to God. And in fasting this experience must be made: if at the beginning it can undoubtedly be painful, difficult, after a few days it gives great lucidity, brings to the lighting. What is not seen when you are simply satisfied with food and drink.
This is why the Jews already practiced fasting, that Jesus sometimes recommended fasting, and advised him above all to resist the devil, demons, these appearances, these ghosts who live in depth and who would like to occupy our heart. We need deep inner forces, fasting provides us. That’s why praying and fasting on that day, as the Pope asked us, was not to say: “We do nothing, God does something! And we offer you prayers and fasting”, but it was truly a path made by us, a commitment that we made firsthand in front of God and with God. Because from God we can only get the Holy Spirit, the strength of his spirit that in our minds we cannot create: reconciliation, of justice.
