DEEPLY embedded in our national mind was once the idea that fate — you might call it divine windfall — was punitive. In the past, calamities called for national fast days.
One of the best natural disasters to afflict our own continent in recent centuries was the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami on 1 November 1755. A Day of National Fast, 6 February 1756, was announced by Parliament. The preamble to the Act made clear who must be blamed for the disaster: “Whereas the manifold sins and wickedness of those kingdoms have most justly deserved heavy and severe punishments from the hand of heaven. . .”.
The nation responded to the decision for repentance with lukewarm enthusiasm. A masquerade ball planned to happen on the Haymarket Theatre was cancelled; gentlemen at White’s put away their cards; the undergraduates at Cambridge — in those days, notoriously ill-behaved — somewhat modified their conduct. “It is somewhat develop into fashionable to be decent,” the Vice-Chancellor of the University commented.
In France, the King promised his confessor that he would quit his current mistress; to not be outdone, his former mistress, Mme de Pompadour, announced that she would quit her rouge.
AS THE Age of Reason took hold, our forefathers — who had once attributed national catastrophe to divine punishment — now turned to the Almighty for cover from their human, not their spiritual, foes.
Parson Woodforde recorded in his diary entry for 28 February 1794: “‘I read prayers this morning at Weston Church being a day appointed for a public Fast to be observed throughout England, to implore the Almighty’s protection from our enemies [the French]. Mr Custance was at church this morning tho’ wet. A big congregation also attended Divine Service. There was no sermon. Dinner today salt fish and parsnips etc.” (The Diary of a Country Parson, edited by Beresford, 1979).
It was in the course of the twentieth century that Days of Prayer became a frequent occurrence in our national calendar. Between 1900 and 1950, there have been no fewer than 21 days designated as occasions of national prayer (by then, the term “fast” was used less often). After the risks and turbulence of those years, reaching their climax within the Second World War, the cessation of conflict was celebrated by a National Day of Thanksgiving on 19 August 1945. Since 1950, there have been no designated days of national thanksgiving or intercession. The annual Day of Remembrance on 11 November is an occasion of national reflection, which, in its solemnity, retains the penitential nature of an ancient Day of Fast and Humiliation.
AS FOR days of personal fasting, these have all the time been observed as a part of our Christian duty, following the instance of Jesus, who fasted within the wilderness as preparation for his ministry. It was found vital, nonetheless, to warn those that would follow him on the trail of self-denial that outward observance have to be matched by inward intention. Salvation couldn’t be won save through Christ alone.
Among the fundamental texts of the English Reformation, the Second Book of Homilies (1552) emphasised that, although abstinence from the “delicious pleasures and delectations” of this world is likely to be a useful way of observing a quick, it was “a devilish persuasion” to consider that “our fasting and other good works could make us good” — an attitude, it asserted, that was “altogether derogatory to the merits of Christ’s death” (The Homilies).
Thomas Becon (1512-1567), chaplain to Archbishop Cranmer and Vicar of St Stephen’s, Walbrook, didn’t mince his words when he wrote: “‘God hateth those prayers, those fasts, those good deeds, as they call them, which come from a defiled body, a corrupt heart, a grimy mind, a bloody conscience, a spotted and pocky soul” (The Potation for Lent, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work, edited by Rowell, Stevenson, and Williams, Oxford, 2001).
JOHN WOOLTON (1535-93) was acknowledged in his day to be a sensible and diligent parish priest. He wrote treatises, amongst them The Christian Manual, or, Of the life and manners of true Christians. In this, he taught that the true nature of fasting was a lifetime of constant “sobriety and temperance” somewhat than one in every of periodic abstention from “certain varieties of meat” (an allusion to the idea that pork inflamed male passion): “I might have men to make use of often fasting, which just isn’t a alternative of some certain varieties of meats, but a perpetual sobriety and temperance of life, to the tip that they could the somewhat bridle and keep under carnal lusts and concupiscences” (Love’s Redeeming Work).
A century later, Susanna Hopton (1627-1709), a widely read creator of devotional works, suggested a more positive use of abstinence. In her meditation on the Sermon on the Mount, she wrote: “‘Give me the gift of discreet abstinence, and the integrity of true self-denial in it . . . that I could abate my very own provisions to provide portions to the poor, and employ my usual time of eating in prayer and meditation, that by these excellent helps, and wings of devotion and prayer I could soar up unto thee and luxuriate in divine union with thee for evermore” (Collection of Meditations and Devotions; Anon, 1717, quoted in Love’s Redeeming Work).
Half a century after that, Parson Woodforde’s diary records a more relaxed attitude to the Lenten fast: “March 29 1768. My father wouldn’t play cards, it being Passion Week and the Justice [Justice Creed, who was visiting] was not very happy. NB No cards this week on the Parsonage which I believe just isn’t amiss, though there is likely to be no harm” (The Diary of a Country Parson).
“DISCREET abstinence” was also advisable by a Victorian scholar, the Revd J. H. Blunt. In 1865, he warned clergy against unrealistic expectations. Considering the circumstances of many within the congregation, he wrote: “To preach up a system of ascetic life, or contemplative devotion, to people whose duties employ their thoughts and time and energy throughout the day, is to evangelise to the winds. Men who’re at their ledgers, behind their counters, engaged within the avocations of a rustic gentleman’s life, in the federal government of the country, or in hard-working professions, cannot really pray seven times a day, in the identical sense as David and Daniel did (Directorium Pastorale, 1865).
Alluding to the poorer members of the congregation, Blunt observed: “Neither can people whose abnormal food regimen is of the best and most sparing description fast within the sense of any great abstinence from food, without incapacitating themselves for doing their duty in that state of life to which God has called them.”
His readers would have recognised Blunt’s quotation from the 1662 Catechism, during which the candidate for confirmation acknowledges an obligation “to learn and labour truly to get mine own living, and to do my duty in that state of life, unto which it shall please God to call me”.
IN OUR own time, the Church has been less exact in her teaching about fasting. Common Worship provides the next words to be utilized by the president on the eucharist at the start of Lent: “Brothers and sisters in Christ, since early days Christians have observed with great devotion the time of our Lord’s passion and resurrection and ready for this by a season of penitence and fasting. . . I invite you, subsequently, within the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.”
But, with regard to fasting, Common Worship — like its forerunner, the Alternative Service Book 1980 — lays down “no rules as to how discipline and self-denial are to be observed; that is left to the person to work out” (Jasper and Bradshaw, A Companion to the ASB, 1986).
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired priest. His most up-to-date publication is Aspects of Glory (The Book Guild, 2025).
