A Reflection from the Pastor: Many years ago, when we were still teenagers, my brother Bob asked a rather profound question as we launched into another Lenten season. He said, “Do you really think that not eating M & M’s for a few weeks is going to being you closer to God?” Hmm. Where did one so young get so much wisdom?
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The Lenten fasting we do and our abstaining from particular foods (like meat) is meant to be an encouragement of (and a sign of) what is happening in our hearts. For the curious, here are “the rules” the Church has established and a thought-provoking commentary (below) by the monk Thomas Merton:
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of FAST and ABSTINENCE. What does that mean? On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Catholics over 14 years of age are expected to abstain from eating meat on these days. Catholics 18 years of age and up to the beginning of their 60th year are expected to fast on these days, taking only one full meal and two other light meals, eating nothing between meals (liquids between meals, however, are allowed).
All the Fridays of Lent are days of ABSTINENCE. What does that mean? Again, Catholics over 14 years of age are expected to abstain from eating meat on the Fridays of Lent.
Health concerns and “doctor’s orders” should take precedence over the practices of fast and abstinence. Fast and abstinence should never jeopardize one’s physical health.
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For some perspective: “Exercises such as fasting cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal meditation. We have to think of what we are doing, and the reasons for our actions must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love. Otherwise, our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real interior meaning.
Sacrifices made in this formalistic spirit tend to be mere acts of external routine performed in order to exorcise interior anxiety – and not for the sake of love. In that case, however, our attention will tend to fix itself upon the insignificant suffering which we have piously elected to undergo, and to exaggerate it in one way or another, either to make it seem unbearable or else to make it seem more heroic than it actually is. Sacrifices made in this fashion would be better left unmade. It would be more sincere as well as more religious to eat a full dinner in a spirit of gratitude than to make some minor sacrifice a part of it, with the feeling that one is suffering martyrdom.”
–Thomas Merton in The Climate of Monastic Prayer
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Let us pray: “Come back to me with all your heart…” Joel 2,12
Lord, if we come back to you with all our heart, this year we will be coming back with heavy hearts. Over this year and because of the pandemic, our hearts have taken on a good share of burdens and sometimes the weight of it all has seemed like it could crush us. We have been unable to gather with friends and family members, our routines have been radically changed, our freedom to come and go has been altered, and there is so much that we miss right now, including the Mass.
There are the burdens of painful memories and the weight of our grief over loved ones we have lost. We are also weighed down by mistakes we have made, opportunities lost, now long gone, careless words spoken in haste, wasted days, and the times we have turned and walked away from the help and healing offered us by you and by many others, Lord. At different times our heavy hearts have weighed hard upon us and we have longed for ways to rise above what has held us down and kept us from getting closer to you and our neighbors.
Come back to me with all your heart… We beg you: unburden us this Lent and lighten our souls which are laden with grief and disappointment. Lift up what we cannot move, Lord, and free us from the heaviness that weighs upon our hearts.
Come back to me with all your heart… With your strong arm deliver us: diminish our burdens, Lord, and ease us out from under all that overwhelms our joy.
Come back to me with all your heart… Refresh our souls, Lord, and put a new spirit within us: help us walk the path that brings us home to you with all our heart. In your Holy Name we pray. Amen.
