“‘A holiday every day’—even every other day—is an idea that cannot be realized in practice,” writes Josef Pieper. “A festival can arise only out of a foundation of a life whose ordinary shape is given by the working day.” Without meaningful work, the whole thing falls apart: “An idle-rich class of do-nothings,” he notes wryly, “are hard put even to amuse themselves, let alone to celebrate a festival.”3 Fasts and feasts cast light on each other, and on ordinary days. And those ordinary days help give meaning to the fasts and the feasts.
