Friday after Ash Wednesday
Fasting is hard! When I am hungry, I tend to become more irritable, impatient, argumentative, and generally grumpy. Who wants that? Why should I fast? What’s the point? One essential reason is for spiritual growth. Fasting enables the Holy Spirit to reveal our spiritual condition and opens us up to transformation. It is also good to remember that fasting does not always have to involve food. We could consider fasting from an app on our phone, gossiping for a day, swearing, listening to music on the way to work, putting sugar in our coffee; the possibilities go on without end, really. How do we work through the tension and anxiety of being called to fast?
Isaiah offers us a different perspective. “Fighting and quarreling...do you call this a fast?” (Is 58:4a,5a) Why is it that we fast? Is it not to draw us closer to God? As in the case from Isaiah (and the gospel), we want God’s attention; we cry out in a desire to be noticed; we create a fake sense of sacrifice and affliction that is actually an egocentric act of self-serving righteousness. Rather than notice the presence of God in our very midst--the elderly neighbor across the street, teachers in our schools, colleagues at work, the person in the car behind us, the clerk at the grocery store, the delivery driver from doordash--we are blinded by our vanity. Instead, Isaiah suggests discipleship:
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own. (Is 58:6-7)
We are called to rethink the typical act of fasting from food and embrace a different kind of fasting from injustice that targets those who are oppressed. Fasting should not be a means of earning favor from God; it should lead us to this spiritual transformation. It is an attempt to align our priorities to the will of God. How can we fast from affluence, indifference, and privilege, hatred, violence, gossip, swearing, selfishness, deceit? Treat others in a way that values them as human beings. Justice and peace should be a reality for all, not just those with wealth, power, and social status.
This past week, Pope Francis made an appeal for a day of prayer and fasting for peace in the world as a way to counter “the diabolical senselessness of violence.” Our fasting need not be an effort to make ourselves hungry and afflicted, but let us fast in an effort to make the poor less hungry and afflicted. If we want to fight sin by taking food away from our own stomachs, then let us put it in the stomachs of the poor. Fasting is not about me; it is an opportunity to draw closer to God. What better way to draw closer to God than to draw closer to our neighbors, to care for our community, to love one another. May we all, in our own way, become instruments of peace for a world that is crying out for peace right now.
Mary, Queen of Peace…Prayer for us.
Blessings,
Brandon Meyer