Fasting By Doing Good"

Today's Mass Readings

Today is the first Friday during Lent, and therefore, a special day for penance. Catholics have become famous for the Friday penance of abstaining for meat for all those who are safely and charitably able and are 14 year of age or older. Penance, however, is a much misunderstood concept. The Catechism of the Catholic Church maintains that penance "prepares us for the liturgical feasts and help us acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart" (CCC 2043). The Church encourages us to practice penance to help us learn more and more to rely upon God. Penance is not so much a punishment for sin as it is protection from sin. Fasting and abstaining from meat, on certain days in Lent for example, is one form of penance that is intended to draw us closer to God.

Are such practices merely legalistic, empty and vain? Only if they are performed as empty and vain practices. If I abstain from meat, but don't attempt an interior conversion, what is the point of such a fast? The Church imposes certain times for penance precisely in order to free us for interior conversion.

Let us pay special attention to verses 5-7 from today's first reading: (Isaiah 58:1-9a)"This, rather, is the fasting that I wish...Setting free the oppressed...sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them..." (Isaiah 58:5-7).

It might appear at first that Isaiah is saying that we should not fast in traditional ways, by "keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed..." (58:5), but this is not the case. That we are meant to fast is implied in today's reading from Matthew's Gospel. Jesus explains that, "The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast" (9:15).

What Isaiah is explaining is that the two forms of "fasting" go together. Abstaining from certain types of food is intended to help us learn to do good to others. It is intended to open us up to God, so that God may transform us to see and then meet the needs of others around us. The fasting of which Isaiah is critical is the merely external, where you abstain from food and then end your fast by quarreling (Isaiah 58:3-4).

Lent is a spiritual pilgrimage. It is a season meant to transform us interiorly as individuals, and as a people. This Lent, let us allow ourselves to be transformed by God. Today, let us offer our fast for some special prayer intention that is close to our hearts. Let us listen to God throughout the day, and try to meet the needs of others when we see their needs. Let us abstain from meat, but let us not only fast from meat, rather, let us also fast by doing good.

- Jeff Morrow