This was my understanding. I think my friend read a rather zealous priest's thoughts.
Interesting enough I held that there should be abstinence before communion when I was a Protestant. I never knew why. It just seemed the right thing to do.
We learn a lot of things just from spiritual experience, and can know other things intuitively.
I have found yet another example of this phenomena in nature. It was found by observing male emperor penguins, that they didn't suffer any physical harm even though they abstain completely from eating any food for 40 days while they sit on the eggs laid by their female mates. Certain scientists were curious to know whether or not this same ability to fast from eating any food for 40 days applied to all other animal species or was limited only to these penguins. Their studies showed that all animals, including us humans, can go exactly 40 days without eating any food without endangering our health, but after that if we don't eat we will begin to move towards dying. How is it that we have always known that the number 40 has such significance in our spiritual and physical being? Now we know for certain that our Lord fasted to the "brink of death", as I once heard it said of Him and His forty day fast in the "wilderness".
Do we need even more evidence that the 40 day fasts of the Church are crucial elements of our spiritual lives? Just sharing some random musings.
EDIT: I must also add that the researcher came to the conclusion that we are not made, physically, to eat all the time. On the contrary, our physical health is optimized by long periods of abstinence from eating food altogether. They claim that there is mounting evidence that many of our common diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. are so prevalent as they are because we don't fast.
If this is all true, then by
not fasting we are not only killing our spirits, but our bodies as well. Hmmmph!
