1st Sunday of Lent 1.3.09 Fasting
Lent has begun. Three traditional things we do in Lent: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.
Of the three one in particular is neglected these days. What is the good of fasting?
It sharpens the focus as we pray; it intensifies our prayer and always accompanies really serious intercessory prayer. The Israelites would always fast when they faced a bigger than usual crisis.
Fasting also atones for sins committed. Sin is taking something I was not entitled to have. Fasting is giving up something I am entitled to have.
It is a way of re-establishing balance. We are not seeking to earn forgiveness but rather to make some effort to please God, to indicate our goodwill.
If we feast all Lent what is there to look forward to at Easter? There is a tradition to eat more on Tuesday before Ash Wednesday; the feast before the fast. But many will continue to feast all through Lent as well!
We need to step back in some way from our normal routine, to make space in our hearts for the final state.
Lent is a kind of re-enactment of Our Lord’s death preceding the resurrection.
If Christ is risen, why bother with Lent and Good Friday? Why not just celebrate 365 days a year that Christ is risen? Because we are not yet in heaven. We are not yet risen either physically or spiritually. Our own lives do not match that of Christ yet. We are still working our way through, getting into the groove, so that we are more likely to appreciate fully the Easter mysteries.
First I have to understand my sin and what I am being set free from. We cannot do much about raising the body but we can do a great deal about the soul, learning to live like we are risen from the dead,
We will be happier at Easter because we have tasted a little bit of death. We have felt what it is like to feel desolate and abandoned.
Thus Our Lord went into the desert. Why? Why not just go and start preaching and healing? To steel Himself for the immense task He was about to undertake. It is not simply something one can walk out the front door and start doing. He had to get into the role - and beating off the devil, even more so.
He was focusing on His relationship with His Father, remembering His objective, keeping Himself without sin. So the devil’s attacks had no impact on Him.
Through the Lenten discipline we steel ourselves for battle. There is a spiritual war going on. We are not yet risen, nor even guaranteed of rising. We have a lot of preparation to do first. One cannot just waltz out there and think it all happens by itself.
It is not that easy to be good, to stay on course.
Where I live I can see footballers training, and I can hear musicians practising.
One does not play football (or the piano) well without practice. Nor does one follow Christ well without training and discipline.
The more we intensify our experience of the spiritual life the more we are going to appreciate the sweet victory.
Lent is just one small part of the calendar and we might be glad when it is over, but really the whole of life is like Lent, and eternal life is like Easter. So the whole of this life is a kind of renunciation, training, setting us up for heaven.
We should be thirsting for heaven like deer for running streams. Our bodily thirst (or hunger), induced by fasting, will sharpen our spiritual hunger for the things of God, helping us – with prayer and almsgiving – to be ready for eternal life.
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