. . .fasting gives me singularly happy afternoons.
In the afternoon the digestion of the meal deprives me of the incomparable lightness which characterizes the fast days.
The discrepancy between the modern observance and the prescriptions of the Rule had struck me ever since the novitiate, and no satisfactory explanation had ever been given to me. People said that man had changed: the weakness of people's health no longer allows us to fast. Was it true?