The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary for Ash Wednesday invite us to a journey of alms giving, fasting and prayer to deepen our experience of the Presence of God in our lives.
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| Alms and fasting |
The Prophet Joel urges a return to the Lord for Jerusalem as it anticipates tragedy.
* [2:18] Jealous: the Hebrew word describes the passionate empathetic bond the Lord has with Israel. The people’s wholehearted participation in Joel’s call for fasting and prayer sparks the Lord’s longing to protect and love his people Israel. This desire moves him to withhold punishment and to send the blessing of v. 14 instead.1
In the Letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes the experience of reconciliation in his ministry.
* [5:21] This is a statement of God’s purpose, expressed paradoxically in terms of sharing and exchange of attributes. As Christ became our righteousness (1 Cor 1:30), we become God’s righteousness (cf. 2 Cor 5:14–15).2
The Gospel from Matthew from the Sermon on the Mount is a teaching about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting.
* [6:1–18] The sermon continues with a warning against doing good in order to be seen and gives three examples, almsgiving (Mt 6:2–4), prayer (Mt 6:5–15), and fasting (Mt 6:16–18). In each, the conduct of the hypocrites (Mt 6:2) is contrasted with that demanded of the disciples. The sayings about reward found here and elsewhere (Mt 5:12, 46; 10:41–42) show that this is a genuine element of Christian moral exhortation. Possibly to underline the difference between the Christian idea of reward and that of the hypocrites, the evangelist uses two different Greek verbs to express the rewarding of the disciples and that of the hypocrites; in the latter case it is the verb apechÅ, a commercial term for giving a receipt for what has been paid in full (Mt 6:2, 5, 16).3
Tom Shanahan, S.J. asks what is most important for us? Clearly it is not to fake out others to make them think that we’re something special. But the truth is that we ARE something special, made so by our Baptism.
The point is where does that “specialness” end up? If it ends in God’s beauty and love for us and in Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice for us: it’s grace. But if it ends in a falsely-humble sign of how good we are it’s the opposite of grace: it’s a blast of the Adam-side of us and totally unrelated to the beauty of Lent.
Lent is a “joyous” season even though many of us have been schooled to think of it as a somber or gloomy period. We think of having to give up things and not entering into the deep joy of hearing and living out the call of Christ. Lent is, liturgically, a preparation for the celebration of Baptism. Members of our community receive Baptism and through it entrance into the very person of Christ. At the end of Lent (Holy Saturday) catechumens begin their lives as “Christed” members of our faith community. By Baptism they join us in the search for the profound meaning of life-in-Christ and growing in faith, hope and charity.4
Don Schwager quotes “Lent - the epitome of our whole life,” by Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD.
"Christians must always live in this way, without any wish to come down from their cross - otherwise they will sink beneath the world's mire. But if we have to do so all our lives, we must make an even greater effort during the days of Lent. It is not a simple matter of living through forty days. Lent is the epitome of our whole life." (excerpt from Sermon 205, 1)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18 shares that Jesus is inviting us to “return to the Lord, your God” this Lent (Joel 2:13). Every journey begins with the smallest, most ordinary of steps. So get into the daily habit of turning to him through these three ordinary spiritual practices. Then watch to see whether something extraordinary comes of them.
These next forty days offer us a wonderful opportunity to enter into the blessings of a routine. If we can commit to praying every day this Lent, we’ll be well on our way to forming a permanent habit of spending time with God and letting his word change our hearts. If we can commit the next six weeks to fasting—from some food or activity or attitude that has too tight a grip on us—we stand the chance of becoming less attached to this world and more attached to Christ. If we can commit to giving some of our time and money to helping the poor on a regular basis, generosity and compassion will begin to flow from us more naturally 6
Michael Barnes SJ lectures in the Theology of Religions. He asks: What do we expect fasting – and prayer and almsgiving and all the other Lenten practices of faith – to do for us? What part do they play in the living out of those ancient patterns of holiness which are inscribed in our sacred texts and traditions? And what can Muslims and Christians learn from each other? (Ramadan 2019 will begin in the evening of Sunday, May 5 and ends in the evening of Tuesday, June 4)
Lent is like Ramadan in the sense that the community of faith is formed by several weeks of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But Ramadan is essentially a daily round, a ritual which marks time and measures the rhythms of life. At the end of each day the process is repeated, until the entire spiritual and physical universe is gathered around a single point of time and creation is restored to a new harmony. The map of time which Christians seek to draw is more complex. Lent intensifies the relationship which the command to follow opens up. Indeed it is itself a pilgrimage in which through personal companionship with Jesus we are drawn more deeply into the intimacy of God’s act of self-communication.7
Friar Jude Winkler comments on the apocalyptic situation described by Joel that declares that NOW is the time to dedicate ourselves to conversion. The destruction of the Temple in 70 CE required that the rabbis recommend replacement of sacrifice with prayer, fasting and giving alms to heal the death brought by sin. Friar Jude imagines the ashes in our heart that do not draw attention to ourselves.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, declares the Eucharist is an encounter of the heart, knowing Presence through our own offered presence. In the Eucharist, we move beyond mere words or rational thought and go to that place where we don’t talk about the Mystery anymore; we begin to chew on it. Jesus did not say, “Think about this” or “Stare at this” or even “Worship this.” Instead he said, “Eat this!”
We must move our knowing to the bodily, cellular, participative, and thus unitive level. We must keep eating and drinking the Mystery, until one day it dawns on us, in an undefended moment, “My God, I really am what I eat! I also am the Body of Christ.” Then we can trust and allow what has been true since the first moment of our existence. We have dignity and power flowing through us in our bare and naked existence—and everybody else does too, even though most do not know it. A body awareness of this sort is enough to steer and empower our entire faith life, while merely assenting to or saying the words will never give us the jolt we need to absorb the divine desire for us.
This is why I must hold to the orthodox belief that there is Real Presence in the bread and wine. For me, if we sacrifice Reality in the elements, we end up sacrificing the same Reality in ourselves.8
The pilgrimage of Lent moves us away from creature comfort concerns to experience the community of the Body of Christ.
References
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(n.d.). Joel chapter 2 - United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/Joel/2:12
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(n.d.). 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. Retrieved March 5, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/2Corinthians/5:20
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(n.d.). Matthew, chapter 6. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/bible/matthew/6:1
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(n.d.). Creighton U Daily Reflections .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/daily.html
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(n.d.). Daily Scripture Readings and Meditations. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://dailyscripture.servantsoftheword.org/
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6
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(n.d.). Ash Wednesday - Mass Readings and Catholic Daily Meditations for .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://wau.org/meditations/2019/03/06
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(2008, February 6). Keeping the Lenten Fast – thoughts from a dialogue ... - Thinking Faith. Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20080206_1.htm
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(n.d.). Daily Meditations Archive: March 2019 - Center for Action and .... Retrieved March 6, 2019, from https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/2019/03/
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