Lent as a Time of Conversion
THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY
February 20 – Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 9: 14-15
Lent as a time of conversion - that is
our project this Lent proposed by our Holy Father. Yesterday we reflected upon
this conversion in terms of listening, listening enough to know what God wants
of us. Today we are called to reflect in terms of fasting… that is the second
term that Pope Leo presents to us – listening and fasting.
The obvious question is, what kind of
a fasting are we speaking about here? Certainly, we are not out to destroy the
traditional value and spiritual merit that lies in fasting from food and
beverage, or abstinence from meat and other goodies of life. What we are up to
here, is what Isaiah intends to do in the first reading today, what Jesus
wishes to do in the Gospel passage today – perspectivise the fasting we
undertake.
Fasting is not deprivation: First
and foremost, fasting should not be centred around an argument of “deprivation”
– I deprive myself of something: the breakfast, meat, another meal or things of
that sort. If so, at the centre of it all I find myself who is deprived of all
these! That is going to blind me further to so many points of focus that Lent
wishes to offer me.
Fasting is an opening to see:
Fasting is not centred around me, but it opens my mind, my heart, my eyes and
my life to the other – in more than one way – making me feel the pinch of not
having something, making me look at the need of the other, making me aware of
what I have always been blessed to have, making me look at those for whom what
I leave out is not an option at all, making me sense in some way the struggles
and sufferings of the other. More than being deprivation, it becomes a setting
aside. Setting aside things, that I could share with others; setting aside my
own feelings, that I may listen to the other; setting aside myself, so that I
can make space for the other.
Fasting is an opening to see God:
If fasting does not lead to me see God present with me, that fasting has not
spiritual meaning - it is merely dieting or disciplining! As Jesus says, when I
feel the need to get in touch with the Divine, I feel the need for fasting;
fasting gets me back into communion with the Lord. In getting me see the other
and the need of the other, fasting makes me see God and what God wants to
communicate to me.
This is the perspective that Pope Leo offers too – he calls for a fasting from harmful words. He says: this lent be kind and watch your words; disarm your language and avoid hard words and rash judgements; fast from slander and from speaking ill of others! That is indeed a fasting that opens us to see God, God who is in others, and God who is with us and within us