A blog by a displaced Catholic Texan working at a parish in a suburb of Milwaukee. Who knows what you're going to get. I am currently looking for employment (a job) in the Washington DC area in catechesis as a youth minister, adult minister, or something along those lines.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Lent Reflection: Friday after Ash Wednesday

Fasting is throughout the text in today's readings.

The Old Testament reading calls us to a renewed sense of fasting, so that it is not only something that we do but an attitude that should be carried throughout the day.  When the people of Isaiah's time fasted, God responded, through the prophet Isaiah: "Lo, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers."  When we fast, we should strive to reorient ourselves to God, not merely to give things up so that we can lose weight, eat healthier, or attain some goal that we have in mind for ourselves.  Those are all fine and good in their own right, but when we fast with those ends in mind we have received our reward.  Instead, through our fasting, we should worship God and through that worship of God bring about the Kingdom of God on earth AKA work towards a more just society.  But how?
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.
When our fasting truly becomes worship and our worship calls us out to serve our brothers and sisters everywhere, then we shall know God intimately, and "Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!"

And yet, when Christ walked upon the earth way back when his disciples didn't fast, but instead Jesus invokes wedding imagery -- they feasted.  What are we to do with this?  I thought God wants us to do all those things above, clothing the naked and all that jazz?  Yes, they will, but that doesn't come up until later (see the Book of Acts).  Right now the disciples are worshiping God.  They have ordered their entire life to following Jesus, the second person of the Trinity made incarnate.  There is no need to fast in the presence of Jesus, instead there must be celebrating, there must be feasting!  There will be a time for fasting, as Jesus says,   but right now isn't the time for his disciples.  But right now is the time for us.
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Reflection:
How is our Lenten fasting?  Do I need to rededicate ourselves to that practice?
Why do I fast?  For selfish reasons or to reorient myself to God?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJnUea_zF98&feature=player_embedded
Blessings,
Isaac

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