Lenten Fast - Do you have a Justification?

THE WORD IN LENT

Friday after Ash Wednesday - March 04, 2022

Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 9: 14-15

Why should you fast this lent? Jesus himself seems to be against fast, as long as the Son of Man is with you! The Lord is with us! And why should we fast? Do you have a reason for your fast, if you are fasting this Lent? And will your reasoning stand before the criteria that Jesus and the Word today offer us this day?

The point is simple: fast cannot be for a rule; it cannot be for the sake of a precept alone; it cannot be for the continuity of a tradition; it cannot be for the sake of your selfish motives of proving to yourself that you can do heroic things or to prove to others that you have stacks of meritorious acts to pride before the world! That is not a lenten fast in the least. 

First let us listen to the criterion that Jesus gives: fast should be sign of true mourning for the absence of the Son, for the absence of the sense of God. Our sins and our faults push us to a sense of absence of God and that is where the need for fast comes in - to mourn the situation. But can it end there? Is mourning enough? Jesus would never accept that, which means there is more to it. The first reading clarifies that.

The fast should be to break the unjust fetters, to let the oppressed go free, to share the bread with hungry, to shelter the homeless, to clothe the naked, to embrace everyone as your brother and sister! That is meaning of true fast, from where one can feel the closeness of God and the sense of absence of God would be gone! Is this not the type of fast that Pope Francis called us to, two days ago for the sake of the Ukraine crisis - to feel one with the suffering innocents there and open our hearts to peace - the ultimate sense of the presence of God!