Dear Friends,
Lent starts on Wednesday. That is the day Catholics and a few of our Protestant brothers and sisters go walking around with black smudge marks on their foreheads. You know, we call it Ash Wednesday. So, let me repeat what I have said the past few years about Lent (repetition helps us learn!).
Lent is NOT a time for misery. Jesus is very clear in the gospel for Ash Wednesday, that when we fast we are to anoint our heads with oil and rejoice. Lent is a time for a special sort of joy. Some will say, “How can that be if we spend the 40 days not eating candy or drinking beer or watching social media or practicing some other form of self-denial? Isn’t that a cause of unhappiness?”
Lent is a time of repentance, but repentance in scripture is presented as a liberation, as a coming to ourselves, as a release from captivity. Repentance is the key to joy and holiness. The spiritual practice of fasting is not limited to Christians and has even become popular in our health conscious world. However, if you have chosen to do something during Lent that makes you grumpy, stop doing it – the world is filled with enough grumpy people.
Here is the theology behind fasting. When Adam and Eve fell, they fell under subjection to the things they were supposed to rule. The dust first, and animals too. It was food that cost them their sharing in God’s glory. They had been asked to fast from one thing and to eat everything else to their heart’s content. But they didn’t. They ate the one thing that could rob them of joy. They became subject to their appetite.
Then everything unraveled. People were in conflict with each other. Everything was turned upside down. The only way to get things right side up again is to repent, which literally means to turn around. When we repent, we do not enter into a time of misery and sorrow. Rather, we restore the dominion we ought to have over our appetites and passions. This is the point, to take back the rightful dominion for which we were created.
I had a fellow tell me, “there’s a time when I am fasting, that the whole world seems more vivid and more colorful than ever before. I can distinguish tastes again. The sky seems bluer than before. The air seems crisper. All of my senses seem to be heightened toward what is God’s creation and what is not. I seem to be able to distinguish between good and evil more readily.” This fellow is experiencing the result of repentance. He is more alive, more connected with God.
Fasting is also an act of worship. By being empty, we can be filled with God. It is a way of directing our love. However, it is one where we can easily cheat by eating or drinking when we are alone. Yet most people do not cheat because the commitment is between them and God…and God knows our heart. Fasting brings sweetness to the act of worship because it is only between the person and God.
During Lent, I encourage you to focus on one thing or a few things. If we fast in a spiritually healthy way, then we bring that thing into submission, and when Easter comes, we can resume that thing denied, no longer as slave, but as rightful master.
Let Lent begin with an act of repentance then. Repent of a self-indulgence and take dominion over it from now until Easter. Make it something easy, a victory you feel confident you can win by the grace of God. Don’t try to conquer every sin and weakness. The smaller you start, the more humbly you begin, the more God can reveal grace in and through you. But enter with joy, for it is joy that we are called to by our crucified and risen Lord.
Peace,
Fr. Damian