As Americans we often imagine that the pursuit of happiness must mean striving after more than we have today.
We encourage one another to pursue ambitious goals, to seek after a life of material abundance, and to fill up our days with activities that promise to satisfy our appetite for more. As Catholics, however, we are called to remember that true abundance and true freedom are fruits of God’s grace, self-discipline, and even self-denial. In this way, Lent is a sign of contradiction to the world, a sign that reminds us that genuine happiness depends most fundamentally on our seeking all that is truly good, healthy and life-giving.
At Lent, the church calls us to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving because it is through these practices that we cleanse and renew ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit. By our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, God shapes our hearts for the true abundance that comes from a deeper relationship with him. The church knows that we must fast from the fleeting glories that this world offers in order to enjoy the true glories of relationship with God, the author of all happiness.
Fasting, a time-tested spiritual discipline of the Christian faithful, prepares us in a deep way for the celebration of our savior’s death and Resurrection at Eastertime.
Fasting may be the most difficult practice of the Lenten season but the most important for remembering that as persons our bodies are sacred. Indeed, even prayer requires that we learn to fast. Prayer requires a willingness to fast from idle chatter and all the thoughtless noise that we too often allow to creep into our days. To hear God’s voice and to grow in every good and holy way as persons set apart means that we must fast from the chaotic noise of daily life.
Especially on days of fasting and abstinence, we are reminded that Lent is a spiritual season but also a corporeal season that calls us to recognize the sacredness of our bodies. Lent is an excellent time to recommit ourselves to a healthy diet, exercise and good sleep habits. By committing to healthy habits as a Lenten discipline we cleanse ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit and become stronger in body and spirit alike.
In addition, by fasting from the temptation to hurry and recklessly rush about, we embrace the Lenten call to grow by living intentionally and with greater trust in God’s promises. The Lenten fruits of renewed contemplation and peacefulness of heart are signs that God desires we slow down to enjoy true happiness in our everyday lives.
We fast because we do not need all the habits, practices and routines that we accumulate throughout the year. If we are not careful, even seemingly innocuous habits and practices of the world become idols that displace the Holy Spirit in our hearts. By our fasting, we invite God to come anew into our lives.
Even almsgiving, the practice of financial and material provision for our church and others, requires that we learn to fast. Pope St. Leo the Great, a fifth-century doctor of the church, understood the deep connection between the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. In one sermon, St. Leo the Great says that there is “no more profitable practice as a companion to holy and spiritual fasting than that of almsgiving.” He wants us to see how important it is that we fast from any attachment or temptation to withhold ourselves from God or one another. “The love that we owe both God and man,” Pope St. Leo says, must always be “free from any obstacle that would prevent us from having a good intention.”
By fasting from our tendency to exaggerate our importance or feed our ego, we may remember that we are brothers and sisters, and that our material conditions are secondary to the measure of love in our hearts. Pope St. Leo urges us to see that “those who are unequal in their capacity to give can be equal in the love within their hearts.”
This Lent, ever dependent upon Our Lord’s infinite love and divine mercy, may we promise anew to fast from all that is not of God, and to live consistently as “temples of his Holy Spirit.”
