Is Wednesday a traditional fasting day? If so, why? Or does Wednesday have other weekly significance? Also, when did the tradition of not eating meat on Fridays start? And my roommate wants to know when the Sacraments were grouped together and called Sacraments.

-- Hannah (archiegoodwin_and_nerowolfe@hotmail.com), January 21, 2001

Answers

Jmj

I was pleased to be able to find the following information for you, Hannah. I learned a lot from it.

"... 'fasting' means going on a disciplined diet." Sometimes it is done as an act of reparation for sin. Sometimes it is done "to find out who is in control, you or your belly, and to win that control" or as "a way of using your appetite as a spiritual snooze alarm that moves you to pray. ... In the first century, Jews fasted on Mondays and Thursdays. The original Christians were Jewish and were used to the fasting as a spiritual discipline. They moved the fast days to Wednesdays and Fridays, because Judas engineered Jesus' arrest on a Wednesday and Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Most often that fast took the form of avoiding meat in the diet [abstinence]. ... meat was rich people's food and fish was poor people's food. That is why the most common form of fasting was to omit meat and eat fish. The Wednesday and Friday fasts were a universal Christian custom in ancient times. The Eastern Orthodox still observe these fasts. The Catholic Church downplayed the Wednesday fast, but kept the Friday fast until quite recently. ... In the 18th century, a man could not be ordained a Methodist minister if he did not fast on Wednesdays and Fridays ... The fasts have died out in the west for several reasons. First, we are becoming very narcissistic. We don't care if our bodily appetites have the upper hand, and many people count recreation and luxury as necessities. ... Nothing in the Bible absolutely requires us to fast. However, when Jesus discusses fasting in Matthew 6, he clearly assumes we have a discipline of fasting as part of our spirituality. He does not say, "If you should happen to choose the option of fasting." He says, "When you fast ..." (Kenneth Collins)

I believe that your question about Sacraments may be somewhat complex. I would like to introduce you to a very helpful Internet site and invite you to read about the Sacraments there. (Maybe you can tell us what you find.) I'm speaking of the "old" Catholic Encyclopedia -- a massive work that took years of work by devoted volunteers to transcribe for us Internet users. If you go to a library, you can see a "new" Catholic Encyclopedia, edited during the 1960s and 1970s, and it is not on the Internet. The old boy goes back to the pre-1920 era. I should give you a few cautions. It was not published by the Magisterium (pope and bishops), so it is not "official" and we can't hold them responsible for something it says that we don't like! Although it is 80+ years old, it is still at least 90% useful. Information about many topics simply does not change. But be on the lookout for that 10% of things that are no longer true -- such as disciplinary matters (days of fast and abstinence, Holy Days of Obligation, Canon Law, etc.), old information that has been replaced by better facts learned through 20th-century archaeology, etc.. Here is a link for the Encyclopedia. When you get there, click on the initial letter of the subject of interest to you. I hope that you will like it.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jgecik@desc.dla.mil), January 21, 2001.

Another fine post John! We've come to expect nothing less! While you touched on the spirtual aspect of fasting, our pastor likes to explain how fasting can condition not only the body but the mind as well and build up mental toughness which serves the Christian well when confronted with temptation later on. He likens it to daily mass or visiting the sick on a regular basis. Not everyone likes going hungry, getting up every single day for 7:30am. mass (as is the case in my parish), or making weekly visits to shut-ins for the greater glory of God. While we don't always recognize Christ in these acts, every single time we perform them, they do pay spiritual dividends in the long run, not to mention any possible ancillary rewards in the hereafter.

God bless,

Ed

-- Ed Lauzon (grader@accglobal.net), January 22, 2001.

Thank you, Ed!

St. James, pray for us.
Immaculate Heart of Mary, beloved mother of God, pray for us.

-- J. F. Gecik (jgecik@desc.dla.mil), January 22, 2001.

Well, I went to the site you suggested, John, and I did find the answer to my roomie's question. If I mess up my Church vocab. let me know, okay?

Anyway, the Council of Trent solemnly defined the Sacraments. The Council met in 13 December 1545 through 4 December 1543. The Council met to determine the doctrines of the Church in response to Protestant heresies and to reform the Church.

That was not the first time the Sacraments had been grouped, though. The Council of Florence (1439), the Profession of Faith by Michael Palaelogus at the Council of Lyons (1274), and the COuncil of London (1237). The sources for the "seven" grouping go back farther. The Encyclopedia says that some writers give credit to Otto of Bamberg (1139) Apostle of Pomerania for first clearly showing that there were seven. But Peter Lombard (d. 1164) names the Seven Sacraments in his Fourth Book of Sentences. The Encyclopedia says that his theologies were mostly rejected by the Scholastics, but that they immediately accepted his definition and enumeration of the Sacraments, showing that the "seven" grouping was not new, and that Lombard just clearly defined them.

The word sacrament was used in early centuries for any sign of sacred things. "After the ninth century, writers began to draw distinctions between sacraments in a general sense and sacraments properly so called."

The article in the Encyclopedia is really long and detailed, so if you want to know more, definitely check it out.

Well, thanks for the link, John...I'll definitely be using it in the future.

-Hannah

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us. St. James, pray for us.

-- Hannah (archiegoodwin_and_nerowolfe@hotmail.com), January 23, 2001.

Jmj

You're welcome, Hannah. And thanks for providing the highlights of your research.
I should mention something important, so that people reading this thread later won't jump to a wrong conclusion.
The historical info you just provided does not mean that the Catholic Church "created" the sacraments between 1100 and 1500 -- but rather that they were found grouped together in lists that go back that far. In reality, the sacraments existed right from the beginning of Christianity, since Jesus instituted them. If you were to research each one individually, you would find them being used by the Church throughout the first millennium.

How to know that the seven sacraments were celebrated even before the earliest listing date you mentioned (1139)?
You probably know that the Eastern Orthodox churches had their great "schism" from Rome in 1054, which precedes that 1139 date. Yet those churches do celebrate (and validly so) our same seven ancient sacraments.

May St. James and Mary, the immaculate mother of God, pray for us.
God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jgecik@desc.dla.mil), January 23, 2001.