I agree fasting should not simply be understood or limited to sacrifice or renunciation. However, mindful of Jesus’ call to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him, I do think sacrifice and renunciation are important aspects. So maybe instead of it being either an attitude of either sacrifice or gain it should be one of sacrifice and gain. The risk is that fasting or any other spiritual discipline becomes transactional in nature – I fast and now God likes me. No, that is not how it works. As you point out these disciplines are for us not God. Seems to me that fasting, silence, solitude are not so much about absence as presence – through those disciplines we create space for the presence of God. I also think there is a revelatory aspect to fasting (as well as silence and solitude.) I am thinking here of Fr. Alexander Schmeman who said, “Ultimately to fast means only one thing: to be hungry – to go to the limit of that human condition which depends entirely on food and, being hungry, to discover that this dependency is not the whole truth about [us], that hunger itself is first of all a spiritual state and that it is in its last reality hunger for God.”

I look forward to reading more of you posts. God’s peace be with you, Mike+