DEEPLY embedded in our national mind was once the belief that fate — you could call it divine providence — was punitive. In the past, calamities called for national fast days.
One of the greatest 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 should be blamed for the disaster: “Whereas the manifold sins and wickedness of these kingdoms have most justly deserved heavy and severe punishments from the hand of heaven. . .”.
The nation responded to the call for repentance with lukewarm enthusiasm. A masquerade ball planned to take place at 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 rather become fashionable to be decent,” the Vice-Chancellor of the University commented.
In France, the King promised his confessor that he would give up his current mistress; not to be outdone, his former mistress, Mme de Pompadour, announced that she would give up 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 protection 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 large 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 during the 20th century that Days of Prayer became a frequent occurrence in our national calendar. Between 1900 and 1950, there were no fewer than 21 days designated as occasions of national prayer (by then, the term “fast” was used less often). After the dangers and turbulence of those years, reaching their climax in 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 private fasting, these have always been observed as part of our Christian duty, following the example of Jesus, who fasted in the wilderness as preparation for his ministry. It was found necessary, however, to warn those who would follow him on the path of self-denial that outward observance must be matched by inward intention. Salvation could not be won save through Christ alone.
Among the basic texts of the English Reformation, the Second Book of Homilies (1552) emphasised that, although abstinence from the “delicious pleasures and delectations” of this world might be a useful way of observing a fast, it was “a devilish persuasion” to believe that “our fasting and other good works can 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, did not 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 filthy 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 wise and diligent parish priest. He wrote treatises, among 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 life of constant “sobriety and temperance” rather than one of periodic abstention from “certain sorts of meat” (an allusion to the belief that red meat inflamed male passion): “I would have men to use often fasting, which is not a choice of some certain sorts of meats, but a perpetual sobriety and temperance of life, to the end that they may the rather bridle and keep under carnal lusts and concupiscences” (Love’s Redeeming Work).
A century later, Susanna Hopton (1627-1709), a widely read author 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 may abate my own provisions to give 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 may soar up unto thee and enjoy 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 would not play cards, it being Passion Week and the Justice [Justice Creed, who was visiting] was not very pleased. NB No cards this week at the Parsonage which I think is not amiss, though there might be no harm” (The Diary of a Country Parson).
“DISCREET abstinence” was also recommended by a Victorian scholar, the Revd J. H. Blunt. In 1865, he warned clergy against unrealistic expectations. Considering the circumstances of many in 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 preach to the winds. Men who are at their ledgers, behind their counters, engaged in the avocations of a country gentleman’s life, in the government of the country, or in hard-working professions, cannot really pray seven times a day, in the same sense as David and Daniel did (Directorium Pastorale, 1865).
Alluding to the poorer members of the congregation, Blunt observed: “Neither can people whose ordinary diet is of the simplest and most sparing description fast in 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, in which the candidate for confirmation acknowledges a duty “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 following words to be used by the president at the eucharist at the beginning 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 prepared for this by a season of penitence and fasting. . . I invite you, therefore, in 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; this is left to the individual to work out” (Jasper and Bradshaw, A Companion to the ASB, 1986).
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired priest. His most recent publication is Aspects of Glory (The Book Guild, 2025).