Every Lent, we instinctively reach for the familiar practices. We choose something to give up, something to loosen our grip on, something that might sharpen our spiritual senses. These small sacrifices matter, but the readings for the Friday after Ash Wednesday invite us to look beneath the surface. Isaiah warns that fasting can become hollow when it never touches the heart. The Psalmist reminds us that God receives a contrite and humbled heart more readily than any external offering. And Jesus reframes fasting altogether, teaching that it is ultimately about learning to desire rightly in the presence — and in the seeming absence — of the Bridegroom (cf. Matthew 9:14–15).

So yes, we fast.

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But the deeper question is: from what does God desire us to fast?

During the Lenten Retreat at Saint Dominic’s Media, we explored the Four Holy Desires the liturgy forms within us: Holy Contrition, Holy Reception of God’s Revelation, Holy Communion, and Holy Apostolic Mission. These desires reveal what God is trying to awaken in us every time we step into the sacred rhythm of the Mass. Yet every holy desire has a shadow — an interior resistance that must be named, confronted, and relinquished. The liturgy, in its quiet wisdom, exposes these resistances. It teaches us not only what to desire, but what to release.

In this way, the Mass becomes a school of fasting long before we choose what to abstain from on our own.

What follows are the Four Unholy Desires the liturgy gently reveals — the desires we must learn to fast from if we want Lent to reach the heart.

1. Fast From the Unholy Desire of Self‑Justification

Letting God tell the truth about us

The Mass begins in silence — not the silence of waiting for something to happen, but the silence where God begins His work. In that quiet, we often discover how quickly we rush to defend ourselves. We minimize our sins. We explain them away. We reassure ourselves that we are “not as bad as we could be.” This is the unholy desire of self‑justification: the desire to manage our own innocence.

But the Confiteor interrupts this instinct with a mercy that is both honest and tender. When we confess our sins “in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do,” the liturgy invites us to stop negotiating with grace and simply stand before God as we are. Saint Augustine understood this dynamic well: sin bends the heart inward on itself, making us experts at self‑exoneration. The liturgy bends the heart outward again, toward truth and healing.

To fast from self‑justification is to let the silence of the Mass become a place of truth rather than a place of hiding. It is to trust that God’s mercy is large enough to hold our whole story.

2. Fast From the Unholy Desire of Self‑Narration

Letting God speak the first word

If self‑justification resists truth, self‑narration resists revelation. This unholy desire shows up whenever we cling to our own interpretations, our own explanations, our own preferred storylines. We want to be the authors of our lives, the ones who decide what everything means.

But the Liturgy of the Word is not a space for us to speak. It is a space for us to be spoken to.

Scripture does not wait for our commentary; it reads us. It reveals what we would rather ignore. It consoles what we did not know was wounded. It calls us to conversion in ways we would never choose for ourselves. St. Jerome’s startling image captures this sacramental reality: when we listen to the Word of God, “Christ’s Body and Blood are poured into our ears.” The Word nourishes the soul the way the Eucharist nourishes the body.

To fast from self‑narration is to approach the Word with open hands rather than closed fists. It is to let God interrupt our assumptions. It is to allow the Gospel to become the story that interprets our lives, rather than the other way around.

3. Fast From the Unholy Desire of Self‑Possession

Letting ourselves be loved into surrender

Communion is not a private moment of spiritual comfort. It is the moment when Christ draws us into His sacrifice — the moment when the heart lifted at the Sursum Corda is offered to God and returned transformed. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, we are drawn into Christ’s own offering, participating in His oblation. And as the retreat emphasized, Communion is the divine exchange: “You give Christ your wounded heart, and Christ gives you His Sacred Heart.”

Yet we resist this exchange.
We cling to control.
We hold back parts of ourselves.
We want to receive Christ without letting Him possess us.

This is the unholy desire of self‑possession — the desire to belong only to ourselves.

To fast from self‑possession is to recognize that Communion is not something we take; it is Someone we allow to take us. It is to let Christ love us into surrender, to let His Heart reshape our own, to let His offering become the pattern of our lives. Saint Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist “the medicine of immortality,” but medicine only heals what it is allowed to touch.

4. Fast From the Unholy Desire of Self‑Containment

Letting grace overflow into the world

The dismissal at Mass — “Go forth, the Mass is ended” — is not a polite conclusion. It is a commissioning. The Eucharist is not meant to remain in the sanctuary; it is meant to walk out the doors in the bodies of the faithful. As the retreat put it,

“You are the tabernacle now.”

Yet many of us live as if grace were a private possession.
We keep our faith quiet.
We shrink our witness.
We become different people outside the church than we were inside.

This is the unholy desire of self‑containment — the desire to keep the Gospel safely tucked away.

To fast from self‑containment is to allow the Eucharist to become apostolic. It is to let the love we receive spill into our relationships, our workplaces, our conversations, our wounds, and our world. The early Church in Acts 2 did not merely attend the breaking of the bread; they became apostolic because of it. Their communion overflowed into mission.

A Fast That Makes Space for God

These four unholy desires — self‑justification, self‑narration, self‑possession, and self‑containment — are far more spiritually dangerous than anything we might give up for Lent. They are the habits that constrict the heart and shrink our capacity for grace. They are the desires that keep us from becoming the people the liturgy is forming us to be.

To fast from them is to let the Mass do its deepest work.
It is to make room for God.
It is to rediscover the clarity of spiritual sight.
It is to become a living sign of Christ in a world that has forgotten how to hope.

This is the fasting that heals.
This is the fasting that transforms.
This is the fasting that allows the Bridegroom’s prayer — “that the world may know” — to take root in us.

And ultimately, this is the fasting that makes the liturgical life not simply something we attend, but something we embody.

David L. Gray, ThM

A 2006 convert from Agnosticism, David L. Gray has emerged as a prolific Catholic theologian, author, and humorist. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Central State University, Ohio, and a Master of Arts in Catholic Theology (ThM) from Ohio Dominican University. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) in Liturgical Catechesis at the Catholic University of America. For more information about Mr. Gray, please visit davidlgray.info