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Psychological Healing
in the Catholic Mystic Tradition

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Questions and Answers
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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

 


 Back to the list of questions

 

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CATHOLIC PSYCHOLOGY

in association with
A Guide to Psychology and its Practice
 

 
Copyright © 1997-2023 Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
 

All material on this website is copyrighted. You may copy or print selections for your private, personal use only.
Any other reproduction or distribution without my permission is prohibited.
Where Catholic therapy (Catholic psychotherapy) is explained according to Catholic psychology in the tradition of the Catholic mystics.

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