PHC alumnus Tait Deems (‘15) delivered a chapel message last Friday on the purpose of fasting and feasting in the Christian faith. His message, in lieu of the approaching Lent season, exhorted students to consider exactly how and why they do both.
"Feasting and fasting are both universal callings,” he said. “Fasting ought to proceed feasting...It behooves us to prepare for The Feast by placing our greatest pleasures at His feet."
He challenged students not simply to forgo things they “want to want less.”
Instead, he explained the purpose of fasting is to allow God to sanctify our desires so that when we return to those pleasures, we might know God more fully through them.
“We should not fast to grow indifferent toward the things we give up,” Tait said. We fast to allow those things to become rightly oriented toward God.
In this context, habitual fasting is critical, as it allows us to draw closer to God through the created world. Tait quoted St. Thomas, saying, "The Divine Goodness is the end of all corporal things." He explained that when God sanctifies us through fasting, we can then participate in his being more fully, and feast more heartily (for God's glory) afterward.
Tait, his wife Amy, and their three children currently live in Pennsylvania while Tait completes his Master of Divinity from the Reformed Episcopal Seminary. When he graduates this May, he intends to pursue ministry in the Anglican Church.
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