Friday After Ash Wednesday
I’ll be honest. I don’t really like fasting. I can easily be tempted to avoid it or find excuses for not fasting, but I do like what comes from it, the fruit of the discipline of it. And, of course, without the discipline we miss out on its fruit. I know I’m not alone in not particularly liking fasting. Afterall, it wouldn’t require discipline if it was easy or enjoyable. Yet, in some ways fasting is easier than what the Prophet Isaiah calls us to in today’s First Reading (58:1-9a).
Speaking through Isaiah we hear God’s voice, “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.” This is a tall order!
And it’s not the fasting and individual sacrifices that Isaiah is speaking out against; rather, that as these disciplines are being carried out the entire point is missed as, “you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers. Yes, your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw.” Clearly, this is not the kind of fasting God is asking of us!
I’m guessing most of us have lived many Lenten seasons, and have heard these readings numerous times throughout our lives. Yet we have never been exactly who we are in this moment, at this age and particular point in our lives and in history. So I wonder how am I, how are we, to respond with specific actions to the call of this particular Lent of 2025?
Let us pray for one another to listen and respond to God’s word today through the Prophet Isaiah in our own lives and the lives of those around us as followers of Jesus this Lent.
~Eileen Miller