The time for remembrance is coming. The most significant event of our Christian life starts February 22, 2023. Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving that begins on Ash Wednesday and continues until sundown on Holy Thursday with the celebration of the Eucharist as the Last Supper. Good Friday is the most solemn day of Holy Week as we meditate on the Crucifixion and Death of our Savior. But we rejoice in the Lord’s Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
What prompts the need to write this blog is not so much what Lent is and how Catholics differ from other Christian churches’ traditions of Holy Week, but more about: What are YOU giving up for Lent?
Yes, what will you be abstaining from during the 40 days after indulging on Mardi gras? This is the most asked question year after year. It never fails. Someone will most likely approach me and ask me what will I be giving up. I wish to invite you to read along as I try to make sense of why this “self-sacrifice” view is meaningless if you just do it to give something up and not to gain something, instead.
The word LENT often symbolizes fasting and abstaining, but some people tend to confuse the season with self-agony and self-sacrifice. In fact, the only sacrifice we should set our hearts on is that of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the ultimate sacrifice offered to God, the life of his only begotten Son for the forgiveness of Sins and to offer us all redemption, a heavenly mansion, and a comforting Spirit.
What we should do while fasting and abstaining is refraining from corporal necessities and mundane delights because these, although trivial, satisfy the physicality of our transitory being, but not the essence of our eternal being -our soul. Sometimes it is easy to continue indulging in the daily activities of our day: drinking a cup of coffee, eating delicious sweets, smoking a cigarette to reduce stress, enjoying an alcoholic beverage. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a little of the fruits of our labor. However, it is when we elevate these frivolities that the real damage to our spirituality begins because we no longer see these things as “add-ons” to life, but rather as the real necessities to live.
For example: A diabetic person who should not be eating lots of sugars is capable of enjoying a piece of candy from time to time. But, what happens if this person finishes a 100-piece bag of candies on their own knowing the effects and the repercussions of their actions? What about an alcoholic? One drink alone may seem harmless, but it can bring this person down because the drinking will not stop at one. This person will continue with another, then another, then another. How about overeating when we are already full? We have gone from a simple joy to a sin because we have abused the mere thing that is supposed to be good.
Hence, giving up something we enjoy should be a well thought out choice and prayed through and thorough, so we can look at the abstinence in a way that makes a difference in ourselves: I will not eat this candy because I will share this privation with the many children who don’t even have a proper meal to grant them the physical strength. There are children in the world who do not even know what a delicious candy may be; or, I will abstain from drinking and offer my sacrifice for those who are struggling with addiction and have lost it all because of it; or perhaps offer our physical hunger for those facing famine and thirst or maybe for the world which hungers for justice and peace.
The deeper meaning of fasting during Lent is to help us overcome our frailties and weaknesses, to understand our own human condition of always failing to do what God wants from us, and to strengthen our humility while ridding off our pride and our selfish ways so we can focus on the needs of others -maybe even in our own family. The purpose of fasting is not to become victims and announce to everyone what we are doing and why we are doing it. Fasting is personal -just you and God. Fasting is not a moment to stop delighting from what we enjoy so we can over indulge at the end of Lent. Abstinence is a method of nourishing the soul -which once we die will not enjoy any of the worldly pleasures of this life. Instead, it will have to satisfy the divine desires that only God gives, in the same way every saint, virgin and martyr has done since the beginning of Christianity.
So, as we approach ASH WEDNESDAY next week, let's just NOT give anything up without thinking of these 8 purposes of fasting and why we should:
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To seek solace in God’s presence. We are physically depriving ourselves from what we find comforting.
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To develop a spiritual sensibility to hear God’s voice through communion, alms-giving, and meditate on the highest sacrifice: Jesus Christ.
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To find God’s favor in our lives. When we face obstacles, illness, crisis we tend to feel weak in the midst of every problem, but fasting helps us understand God is with us every moment of our lives even in the bad ones.
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To break free off the chains of oppression, addiction, abuse, and pains of the past.
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To reinforce our spirit when the temptation to behave our ‘normal way’ presents itself to us daily.
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To increase our faith so we can withstand problems and live the commandments.
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To nourish our spirituality. Faith alone is meaningless if we don’t communicate with God or if we don’t act like Jesus would towards other people. Spirituality helps us live a more fulfilled Christian life.
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To repair our faults, misdeeds, and wrongdoing. Through fasting and abstinence, we can rekindle the relationship with God we may have once thought was lost.
God never ceases. God never abandons us. It is us who choose to walk away from living a spiritual life and indulge in the vain and the mundane because we want to be better than, we want to know more than, and we think that tricking the soul into frivolities will grant us everything we need to live comfortable, but we will missing the biggest piece of it all: GOD = LOVE. Without love, without God, we are nothing. (1Cor 13:1).
<3lessings,
TSJ
