Augustine clearly believed in abstaining from worldly pleasures. He mentions in his Confessions 10.31 that he fights against the sweetness of earthly pleasures with fasting, because he has come to view food as a necessary medicine for sustaining life rather than existing for enjoyment. In what is perhaps his longest sermon, Discourse of Augustine the Bishop Against the Pagans (which may have lasted three hours), he filibusters on New Year’s Day 404 to keep his congregation in church and away from the pagan festivities going on in the streets outside.149 Apparently, it was customary to observe fast days in the church during pagan feast days: “We regularly say that fasting is to be practiced during these festive days of the pagans, precisely as a kind of prayer to God for the pagans themselves,” but unfortunately it seemed that Christians were just as willing to participate.150 He says the Lord was figuratively fasting in not taking the godless into his body, as he was fasting from the fruitless tree that he cursed.151 In an echo of Did. 1.3, he urges his people to fast for the Gentiles. He chastises them for going without food while they gamble on games, when the church asks such a small thing of them as fasting on January first. This custom apparently was divisive in the congregation, as some wished to regard it as a feast day.152 Some Christians were so caught up in pagan frivolities that the faithful congregation ought to fast on behalf of the large number of these wayward brethren as well. Christian feast days should be more like a letting up of fasting, rather than like the pagan revelry around them.153 Toward the end of his fiery sermon, he ties prayer, almsgiving and fasting together, saying that they will reach Christ if done in sincerity, because Christ made himself poor for us, he fasted for our sakes, and prayed for us and forgave our sins.154
Augustine annually preached a “solemn exhortation” at the beginning of the Lenten fast, to feed the minds of his people as they set about chastising the body and making a cross of the pleasures of the flesh.155 As Moses, Elijah and Jesus fasted forty days, so Lent is celebrated for forty days; but what is signified in Lent should last through the whole of the year. All year one should abstain from sin, but during this time one should abstain even from some of that which is good, such as food and marriage partners. Ascetics might fast on other days of the year as well, and they should add to those fasts during Lent. Delicacies should not be merely
149 Discourse of Augustine the Bishop Against the Pagans, Sermon 198, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, pt. 3, vol. 11, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans.
Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1995), 229, n. 1.
150 On The Three Ways of Understanding Christ in Scripture, Sermon 341.26, Works of St. Augustine 3.11: 304-05: “Those of you here today who didn’t fast yesterday should grieve that you spent the other festival days of the pagans in this way, while we were feeling so sad for you, and should please have the goodness, some time or other, to relieve us of our sadness and yourselves of your vile behavior.”
151 Against the Pagans 5, The Works of St. Augustine 3.11: 184.
152 Against the Pagans 6, The Works of St. Augustine 3.11: 184-85.
153 Against the Pagans 9, The Works of St. Augustine 3.11: 187.
154 Against the Pagans 56, The Works of St. Augustine 3.11: 223.
155 On the Beginning of Lent, Sermon 205.1, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 103.
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rearranged by eating or drinking unusual things, because that would be a mere pretense of self-denial.156 But above all, one should fast from quarrels, and do justice in line with Isaiah 58.157 This theme of doing justice and fasting is echoed again and again, and when these virtues are practiced, prayers will fly more readily to heaven.158
In a sermon dating from A.D. 420-25, Augustine says that almsgiving is:
… a practice which with holy and faithful men customarily goes along with fasting, so that what is subtracted from the one who has may be added to the one who has not. This is the way to cheat your soul to your own profit; to place firmly in heaven what you take away from the flesh.159
Here Augustine ties the ascetic value of fasting to the classic acts of righteousness of Matthew 6, and the early church’s connection of fasting with deeds of social justice is continued. This use of the acts of righteousness is a repeated theme in Augustine’s work, especially his Lenten sermons. For instance, he says,
And so let us perform our alms and deeds of kindness all the more lavishly, all the more frequently the nearer the day approaches on which is celebrated the alms, the kindness that has been done to us.
Because fasting without kindness and mercy is worth nothing to the one who’s fasting.160
The almsgiving ties in with the theme of social justice, and together sincere, virtuous lives of righteousness show one to be acceptable to God, and thus prayers go unhindered to heaven—and so the link with Isaiah 58 and Matthew 6 is made complete.
Augustine explains the calendar cycle of Lenten fasting and Easter baptism, like Tertullian, as being a kind of inverse of Christ’s experience.161 Since in baptism a Christian strips off the old, flesh-bound life, it is most appropriate (though any day of the year might be acceptable) to be baptized on Easter, the day of Christ’s resurrection. There is no special merit in the day, but the majority of people seeking baptism converge on that day due to the greater joy of the feast. But it must be remembered that Christ’s baptism differs from John’s; Christ received John’s baptism, Christians receive Christ’s. So Christians do not necessarily need to fast after baptism, as Christ did. Rather, like Christ, we should fast when faced with temptation, and the period of Lent, and before one’s baptism, symbolizes that.
Fasting during Lent is a humbling of oneself. The bridegroom has been taken away, and we have to mourn (Matt 9:15-17; Ser. 210.4). He echoes Tertullian’s “let us
156 This must have been a personally vexing issue, as it creeps into every annual Lenten sermon with fairly strong and pertinent comments; cf. Sermons 207.2, 208.1, 209.3, 210.10-11.
157 On the Beginning of Lent, Sermon 205.1-3, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 103-5.
Cf. Sermon 209.1.
158 On the Beginning of Lent, Sermon 206.2-3, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 107-08.
159 On Almsgiving 1, Sermon 390, The Works of St. Augustine 3.10: 413.
160 On the Beginning of Lent, Sermon 207.1, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 109-110.
161 On the Beginning of Lent, Sermon 210, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 118-27.
fast and pray, for tomorrow we shall die.”162 During the fifty days of Pentecost the fast is lifted for the joy of the resurrection.163 He urged more frequent fasts for those who were able. He also noted that total abstinence from food is impossible, but the same is not true of sex. He says, “I don’t think it’s asking too much to suggest that married chastity can do for the whole paschal solemnity what virginity can do for the whole of life.”164
Apparently the act of fasting could be viewed as a kind of punishment, perhaps in connection with the idea of penance for sin. In discussing the reality of original sin in even infants, he mentions the example of Ninevite children being required to enter into fasting and prayers of repentance, and finds Jerome (and all of orthodox history) in agreement with him.165 In describing the kind of righteousness that is possible while away from the presence of the Lord, he goes to the acts of righteousness of Matthew 6, almsgiving, fasting and prayer. He says:
By fasting he meant, of course, the whole chastisement of the body.
By almsgiving he meant every instance of good will and every good deed, whether in giving or in forgiving, and by prayer he suggested all the forms of holy desire. The chastisement of the body holds in check that concupiscence which ought to be not merely held in check, but ought not to exist at all and will not exist in that perfection of righteousness in which there will be no sin whatsoever.166
Augustine cites Basil’s sermon on fasting (which he notes that he translated himself from the Greek to gain more exact fidelity to the original), and notes that the command to Adam not to eat from the tree implied fasting.167 Because Eve did not fast, we fell from paradise. Now we must fast so that we may return to it. He uses this passage from Basil to show that Basil was in agreement that the healthy do not need a physician, but the sick, and that because of the original sin in paradise, humanity is fallen.168
In his list of heresies, he mentions the Aerians, followers of a bishop Aerius who fell in with the Arians and added some of his own teachings. He taught that
“the solemnly prescribed fasts should not be observed, but that each one should fast
162 Ser. 210.7, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 122.
163 Ser. 210.8, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 122-23.
164 Ser. 210.9, The Works of St. Augustine 3.6: 123.One wonders whether Augustine’s married hearers would agree with his entirely positive assessment of what married chastity did for them, as they would likely have found pleasure in returning to normalcy, just as with eating.
165 Answer to the Pelagians: The Punishment and Forgiveness of Sins and the Baptism of Little Ones 3.6.12, Works of St. Augustine 1.23: 127-28.
166 Answer to the Pelagians: The Perfection of Human Righteousness 8.18, Works of St. Augustine 1.23: 296.
167 On the use of Basil’s sermons by Augustine, translations available to him and a chart of relationships of various editions, see Heinrich Marti, ed. and trans., Rufin von Aquileia, De ieiunio I, II: zwei Predigtenüber das Fasten nach Basileios von Kaisareia (Leiden: Brill, 1989), xxviii-xxix.
168 Answer to the Pelagians, II: Answer to Julian 1.17, 32, Works of St. Augustine 1.24:
279, 291.
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as he wishes so that he does not seem to be under the law.”169 A monk, Jovinian, taught that all sins are equal, and that once one has been baptized into regeneration, fasting and abstinence from foods were of no value. He also taught that chaste marriage was of equal merit with celibacy, which was considered heretical and stamped out.170
Augustine makes an analogy between sexual desire and the desire for food, saying that a Christian can put up with the desire for food so long as it does not overtake him. Nevertheless, it should be fought against by fasting and eating less than is desired, because it is a fallen desire that wars against what is good in the spirit. Sexual desire is even more hazardous, because one might still enjoy conversation and rationality while enjoying food, but engaging in sex often causes couples to be totally given over to bodily passions. Augustine thinks this is something wiser Christian couples would even want to give up, if they could.171
Franz Cremer notes that Augustine’s comments on the synoptic fasting query places the Christian in a temporal continuum, after the mournful fasting of the old covenant, and in the new covenant that fasts in joy in anticipation of knowing and being like Christ. Cremer says that Augustine’s approach to fasting in these passages can be characterized by the contrast between “Trauer und Freude,” or
“sadness and joy.”172 Christ has turned our mourning into gladness with his appearing, so for Augustine, Christian fasting could no longer signify mourning in the redemptive-historical sense. This appears to be a creative theological exegesis of the text, one that over-realizes the eschatology inherent there. But at least there is present in Augustine an awareness of the eschatological turn of the ages, which for him connects to the joy of being like Christ.
On the whole, these passages show Augustine to be committed to fasting, yet clearly in the context of Christians willingly giving themselves over to Christ.
Ritual acts like fasting are valuable, but they must be understood as means to an end. Worldliness is all around the Christian, and fasting will help to learn to avoid it. There is perhaps an underlying aversion to the material world that affects his understanding of fasting, which results in some devaluation of the goodness of the creation as given to us by God. While the tone seems a bit more negative than that of Basil’s examined above, it is clear that Augustine wants to use fasting to promote Christ-likeness. The next sermon to be examined makes that even more clear.