In the first reading on Ash Wednesday – opening the Season of Lent, Prophet Joel
Proclaims: “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning….Blow the trumpet in Zion proclaim a fast….” The fast the Lord is seeking on our part is not sacrificing animals or grains which have no connection with our ways of living among one another. Prophet Isaiah reports: “What are your endless sacrifices to me? Says Yahweh. I am sick of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of calves….When you stretch out your hands, I turn my eyes away…Your hands are covered in blood…Wash, make yourselves clean. Take your wrong doing out of my sight. Cease doing evil, learn to do good, search for justice, discipline the violent, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Is. 1:11;15-17)
Thus, this Lent, let us not focus in on giving up a favorite food of activity to such an extent that it distracts us or lead us to lose our focus on what counts with Jesus and his invitation to us to join with him in announcing and establishing with him what he called the “Kingdom of God,” a “kingdom, of justice and peace,” a “civilization of love.”
Superficial disciplines like giving up deserts etc. should only function to remind us of a far greater, deeper agenda for this Lenten season – the agenda Joel and Isaiah announce to us as God’s own agenda for us.
The fasting that Jesus recommends and even commands is a perpetual fasting from what tears down our brothers and sisters, what aids and abets injustice, poverty, violence, revenge, divisiveness of every sort, all obstacles to community.
Yes, Jesus certainly counsels fasting but also feasting as well. He invites us to feast on social responsibility – as in answer to the disciples who one time suggested to him that he let the crowd go home to get some food. He told them: “Feed them yourselves”. (Matt….). Jesus tells us over and over again in the gospels that report on his ministry to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, comfort the sick, minister to the jailed, forgive the enemy. In fact, in his classic description of the “Last Judgment” in Matt 25:31-46: he plainly says such commitment and response to the needs of the variously poor among us is the essence of salvation, the essence of living as a citizen of the Kingdom of God in the here and now of this present life.
Next week I will offer some ways in which Catholic Social Teaching can help us think about and translate these “:spiritual and corporal works of mercy” into our discipleship, into our way of embracing the cross that Jesus assures us is part and parcel of following him into what is truly “God’s Country!” You see, it’s not ever a question of fasting or feasting, but always a call for both.
Peace, Fr. Ron
