Fasting – from lack to fullness
THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – WEDNESDAY THIRD WEEK
March 11 – Deuteronomy 4: 1,5-9; Matthew 5: 17-19
From lack to fullness – Reflecting on fasting this week, the discussion on laws and customs comes in very significantly: “take notice of the laws and customs that I teach you today and observe them, that you may have life” says the first reading from Deuteronomy. Obedience is a very strong perspective, inevitable when speaking of faith. It is in obedience that one expresses his or her deep faith.
However some teachings Jesus and some of his practices did bring into question the concept of faithfulness to the law or the customs… be it his questioning of the strict rules of sabbath, be it his interactions with the so-called sinners and publicans, or be it his hailing of the Samaritans. Hence he had to make it explicitly clear to them: I have come not to abolish the Law but to complete it, bring it to its fullness… in fact even this is a movement from lack to fullness.
Jesus was not all out on destroying the law or deconstructing the customs, he was merely questioning the annoying interpretation of the law in terms of its letter and the senseless practice of the customs without really coming into grips with the core purposes for which there were instituted in the first place. Not eating, abstaining from, practices of piety and works of charity – all of them, even on our part, if they are done without purpose or mindless of their implications, we are not really keeping up the law; we are in fact killing it!
Whenever the book of Deuteronomy speaks of the choice between life and death, obviously, it speaks in terms of laws and morals, customs and traditions, commandments and precepts. It was so prominent a vision that it was beginning to lead the people to slavery, because they were observing the law but mindless of its objectives and purposes.
Obedience and the spirit of it, is the sole remedy we find proposed by Jesus in his words and his life – Food, for me, is to do the will of the One who has sent me… obedience of Christ, the messianic Sonship which dares to give of itself totally for the salvific plan of God. Lent, as a set of ardent practices, has to lead us to this: a sense of fulfilment in obedience!