Corrective Action

When we reflect on our life journey we can see times when we needed and benefited from corrective action. This change in our direction may have been enforced by parents, inspired by God or influenced by friends. In the text from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today Amos presents the enormous grace which Israel will receive from God after the correction necessary to remove, as noted by Friar Jude Winkler, the cancer of social irresponsibility to the poor and superficiality of spiritual attention to God. The Gospel of Matthew addresses some of the benefits of fasting. The denial of self and particularly the pleasures to which we tend to become addicted reawakens the sense of need for God and the intimate Presence of God as our body yearns for satisfaction and our Spirit resonates with the Divine. The lesson from Matthew is that in Jesus Presence there is no need to fast to experince Him. Fasting reawakens the resonance of our Spirit with Jesus. Our tendency to take excessive care of ourselves is corrected to prayer and contact with the Divine through fasting so that we might attend to the needs of others.