Welcome, everyone, as we continue this holy season of Lent. During this season,

Transcription

1 Welcome, everyone, as we continue this holy season of Lent. During this season, we are focusing together on our relationship with God, and how it can be better. Last week, I spoke about my seminary days and the formal process of evaluation that it entailed. The directors of formation used to point out areas in which we had room for improvement. After a few such evaluations, we hopefully caught on to the fact that that would always be the case, that there would always be room for improvement. Whether we are a priest or religious, married or single, lifelong Catholic or new disciple, our task is to grow, to evaluate where we are in our relationship with God now, and how we can take the next step. The temptation in this process is to settle for good enough. My relationship with God is good enough. My faith is good enough. My love for others is good enough. Imagine if we extended that into other areas of our life. Imagine your spouse came to you and said, Honey, pookey, I want to be closer to you, and you responded, Ehhhh, no, we re close enough. Guys, you would never say that, right? So why would we say that to God? He wants to give us the fullness of life, the fullness of happiness. Our response is, Yes. More. How can I grow in holiness? What is my next step in growing closer to you? We heard the first step in last week s gospel: repent; literally, change your mind. Think again. Think again about the choices that you are making and where they are leading you. If they are leading you away from God, change your mind. Turn away 1

2 from those poor choices, and turn towards God. That is the first step in moving forward: getting pointed in the right direction. So let s say you ve done that, and now you want to take that next step. You have acknowledged that there is some room for improvement in your life, some ways in which you could better serve God. Perhaps it s how you spend your leisure time. Perhaps it s how you spend your money. Perhaps it s how you treat your neighbor. Whatever it is, the challenge is usually not knowing what to do. We know how to treat our neighbor, we know what is a waste of time and how we could better use it, we know what is a waste of money and how we could better spend it. The challenge is not knowing what to do; the challenge is having the will and the strength to do it. Because we can really get set in our ways, right? The force of habit is a powerful force, one that can be hard to fight. In order to fight it, it is important to be aware of where the battle is taking place, so that we can be prepared. Our efforts to overcome temptation, to serve God more faithfully, to grow closer to Him, are not physical battles, even though they are manifested in the physical world. It may be our bodies that tell us to stay in our soft, warm bed rather than get up to pray, but it is not our bodies that make that choice. This is a battle of our will, a spiritual battle, and so we arm ourselves with spiritual weapons to fight it. 2

3 Those weapons are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. These are spiritual exercises that make us spiritually stronger, and better able to take that next step in holiness. We will meditate upon these three over the next few weeks. Today, we ll focus on fasting. Fasting is not fun. There s no sugarcoating it. When we spend time in prayer, we may feel a spirit of consolation. When we give charitably of our talents and our treasure, we can take satisfaction in the good that we are doing for someone else. We don t usually enjoy the act of fasting, though. When describing heaven, Scripture uses the imagery of a great feast, not bread and water. To eat and be satisfied is a blessing. Fasting is a penance, one we usually look forward to stopping, to when we can break our fast. After all, our bodies want food, and our bodies are essential to who we are. In today s gospel, we heard Mark s account of the Transfiguration. In revealing his divinity through the transfiguration of his body, one of the basic things that Jesus teaches us is: the importance of our bodies. No human being has ever existed who didn t have a body, even if it didn t get past the stage of a single cell. To be human is to have a body. There was the line of thought in Greek philosophy that our bodies were more like prisons, trapping our human spirit. Death, then, was a great blessing, our release from captivity, and we could finally exist as we were intended to exist, as a pure spirit, free from the shackles of these physical bodies. You can 3

4 still find that way of thinking today, whenever someone says something along the lines of, It s just my body, it s not me. Jesus shows us otherwise, through his teaching and through his own death and resurrection. If our bodies are not essential to who we are, then why be raised from the dead? It would be unnecessary. No, our bodies are a part of us; therefore, what we do with them affects our entire person, including spiritually. Our bodies are a part of our spiritual battle. So in order for fasting to be effective, our spirit must be involved. When we fast, we will be tempted to break it, as were Adam and Eve when they were told not to eat of the one tree in the garden, as was Christ after forty days of fasting in the desert. By sticking to our fast until it is time to break it, we are acknowledging that we do not live on bread alone, that there is more to our life than just the physical world, that our spirit can overcome the weakness of the flesh. This control of our will over our physical desires is spiritual training. It strengthens us so that when we are tempted to sin, to something that God has told us not to do, to choose a path that leads us away from Him, we can say, No. Fall in line. Stay on the path of holiness. That is why fasting in such a way that we have to engage our will is the most beneficial. If we want to grow stronger physically, we have to exercise until we 4

5 feel the burn and have to struggle to finish. If we want to grow stronger spiritually, we have to fast until we feel it, and find it a struggle to stick to it. We may not be able to fast as long as we intended, just as we may not be able to exercise as much as we d hoped, but that s all right, those were just our personal goals. What matters is the struggle, the training, the practice of being directed by our will and intellect, rather than our bodily desires. So, next steps. As a part of our communal Lenten penance, we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But guess what? That s just the minimum. We can do more than that on our own. If you are struggling in a particular area of sin, if you find that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, then it s time to exercise. Choose a day this week to fast, and design it in such a way that you ll struggle. If you don t make it as long as you wanted, don t consider it a failure. It s not like you gave in to sin by breaking your fast early, any more than it s a sin to do ten pushups instead of twenty. It s just where you are today, and next time you ll be a little stronger. If you find that you re snapping at people because you re hungry, then for crying out loud, eat something, and then pray about how skipping one or two meals had such an effect on your charity, and resolve to do better next time. If we practice and get stronger in an area that s morally neutral like food, we will be more likely to break those sinful habits that lead us away from God. 5

6 All of this is a part of our advancing down that path of holiness. And God is not only at the end of that path, waiting for us; He is on the sidelines cheering us on, He is beside us picking us up when we fall, and He is within us giving us strength to continue. Let us do our part and continue to try to grow closer to Him, so that we can one day reach the fullness of joy. 6