16 February 2018
Friday after Ash Wednesday
“Why do we fast, but you do not see it? Afflict ourselves, but you take no note?”
See, on your fast day you carry out your own pursuits, and drive all your laborers.
Again we have come to the Fridays in Lent when abstinence is not only the recommended form of penance, but a required form of penance. On this day many will suddenly become aware of the paramount place meat has taken in their diets, and may wonder, ‘why am I denying myself the joy of a delicious hamburger, pulled pork sandwich or delicious ribeye steak?’ The reason is not because self-denial is good in and of itself. Nor can it be that we are fasting and abstaining because that automatically improves our relationship with God (see the readings today). If that were the case, Jesus would be telling his disciples to be fasting exactly like the Pharisees rather than warning them about the leaven of the Pharisees whose fasting was an occasion for becoming puffed up with pride. If our actions, even good actions, even spiritual actions are simply serving our own egos, then they are disordered, because they are not leading us to God.
Rather Christ tells the disciples to fast, and Christians continue to do so because self-denial can be spiritually medicinal. It is precisely because of disorder in our desires, priorities and relationships with others that we are called to deny ourselves so as to become far more sensitive to the justice we should be rendering to God and neighbor. With the exception of expectant mothers, no person eats for someone else, only for himself. Therefore, to apply the brakes in consuming food (at the very least in consuming certain types of food one day a week), is to start (with God’s gracious assistance) to reassert the proper balance that should exist in our lives, not seeking ourselves and our own interests first, but God’s. It is a bodily beginning to our open recognition that we have allowed sin to take Christ from His seat of honor in our hearts and minds. In this Friday abstinence, the Church has found a reliable means to helping us return to the bridegroom who so yearns for our love.