Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition


                                                                                    

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Questions and Answers

All of this sounds like medieval theologians arguing about whether chewing on a blade of grass breaks a fast. What’s the point of nitpicking?

 
I can answer your question by answering the question you don’t ask.

What is fasting all about anyway? Isn’t it about realizing that you need to hunger for God as much as you hunger for food? To put a piece of grass in your mouth during a fast, you’re “soothing” yourself—however unconsciously—and that detracts from your hunger for God. So the grass really does break the fast. The answer doesn’t depend on nitpicking about how insignificant the grass may be, or how minuscule are the nutrients in it. It has nothing to do with a legal approach that looks for loopholes, because if you look for loopholes in love, it’s not love in the first place.

And in that you have the essence of Catholic mysticism. No loopholes. Just pure love.

  

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.

  

—Matthew 5:6

 


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