Lent is just around the corner. Here are a few thoughts about Lent and fasting!

Everything in this world is given to man for him to live so that in living he might be living in communion with God.  Food keeps us alive so we can live for God in this life in preparation for the next.  Food gives us strength so we could go to work and take care of our families, so that we and our families could survive another day and praise God for His goodness.  Food gives us strength so we can lend our hands in reaching out to help a neighbor in need.  Food is so amazing because it keeps us alive and it is so enjoyable – at least some food anyway!  But in itself, food has no power to keep us alive.  God has given food that power.  Thus, apart from God, apart from the principle of life, food does not bring life, but death.   The tragedy for Adam is that he believed in food!  Adam disregarded God’s words, but Adam believed in food!  We too can be trapped in the same tragedy if we eat to live so that we could then live our lives totally apart from God.

On this first Sunday of Lent, the question is this: What is the life of man?  What does it mean to be alive?  For us, to eat, to live, to be in communion with God: these belong to the same reality.   Christ Himself has declared, “My food is to do the will of the Father.”

That is why fasting is an essential component of Lenten disciplines.  Fasting causes hunger, and hunger helps us realize that we have no life in ourselves, that we are dependent on something from outside.  Hunger from fasting forces us to face the ultimate question, “On what does my life depend?”  By fasting, by eating less than we normally would, we begin to experience the liberation from total dependence on food Christ has gained for us.  By fasting we have a taste of what it means to be a child of God – someone over whom nothing earthly, nothing material can truly hold sway, regardless how pleasing and pleasurable!  By fasting, we tell the devil to take a hike because whatever he is dangling before our face cannot move us an inch from God, not even the most savory food and the choicest wine and the most decadent chocolate!  By fasting we come to understand that with prayer and grace and adoration, our physical life could be transformed into a beautiful things because of the communion with God.  Ultimately, fasting and prayer – these two must be together – help us to realize the true hunger of man is the hunger for God.  That in the final analysis, the hunger for God is what defines man, and when this hunger is satiated with the Bread from heaven and the Word of God, we shall live life to the fullest!

Padre