Lent Reflections Third Day..."FASTING" Friday, February 20, 2015

Fasting:

In Isaiah 58: 1-9 we hear of the fasting that God desires: “sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked…” 

The reading makes it clear that fasting has nothing to do with self-discipline or punishment but more about doing good for others. 

True fasting then that is pleasing to God is one in which you take up the corporal works of mercy daily. 

America Magazine’s editor Kerry Weber in her book ‘Mercy in the City,’ says, “Sheltering the homeless means to opening your home to those who need a place to rest --not only to the literal homeless, but to those who need to feel at home.

A home-sick co-worker? A lonely acquaintance? 

Sheltering the homeless is all about "growing the walls of your heart." 

Could it be that we can fast by expanding our home to welcome people who need to feel at home offering our hospitality? 

Could we spend some quality time listening to that ‘homeless’ co-worker of yours so that God’s love may be felt in their destitution?

Clothing the naked is a work of mercy that is pleasing to God.

How do we do it? 

Weber says, "Maybe we shouldn't be holding onto closets full of clothes long after we've stopped wearing them. Maybe we don't need 10 or 12 different sweaters, just a few". 

What does what's in your closet--and on your body today--say about you? 

St. Basil said, "the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked." 

Does protecting your own possessions keep you from generously loving and giving? 

Can you re-evaluate what it is that you wear, and instead choose to put on a garment of love? 

Could it be that we fast by looking into the closets of our own lives and ‘decloset’ and detach ourselves from what we don’t really need and share generously with those in need? 

Lent challenges us to discover the lonely, the homeless, and the naked among us and put on them the garment of love, care and compassion. This indeed is not fasting but feasting on the love of God ‘poured out into our hearts’. 

Are you ready for it?

To the priests, the consecrated and the laity of the 

Archdiocese,

Rend your hearts, not your garments;

Return now to the Lord your God,

Because He is compassionate and merciful,

Slow to anger and rich in mercy …

Little by little we get used to hearing and seeing, through the

 media, the black chronicle of contemporary society, 

presented almost with perverse enjoyment and we also get 

used to touching it and hearing it around us and in our own

flesh. The drama is in the street, in the neighborhood, in our

 home, and, why not, in our heart. The suffering of the 

innocent and peaceful never ceases to hit us; contempt for

 the rights of the most fragile persons and peoples are not 

that foreign to us; the dominance of money with its demonic 

effects such as drugs, corruption, the trafficking of persons,

 including children, together with material and moral misery 

are the common currency. The destruction of fitting work, 

the  painful emigrations and the lack of a future are also 

added to this symphony. Our errors and sins as Church are 

also not absent from this great panorama. The most 

personal egoisms are justified, and not because of this are 

they lesser, the lack of ethical values in a society that 

metastasizes in families, in the coexistence of 

neighborhoods, villages and cities, speak to us of our 

limitation, of our weakness and of our inability to transform 

this innumerable list of destructive realities.

The trap of impotence makes us think: Does it make sense 

to try to change this? Can we do anything in face of this 

situation? Is it worthwhile to try if the world continues its 

carnival dance disguising everything for a while? However,

 when the mask falls, the truth appears and, although for

 many it is anachronistic to say it, sin reappears, which 

wounds our flesh with all its destructive force, twisting the

 destinies of the world and of history.

Lent comes to us as a cry of truth and sure hope, which 

answers yes, that it is possible not to put on makeup and

draw plastic smiles as if nothing is happening. Yes, it is

possible that everything be made new and different because

God continues to be “rich in kindness and mercy, always 

willing to forgive,” and He encourages us to begin again and

 again. Today we are again invited to undertake a paschal

 journey to Truth, a journey that includes the cross and 

renunciation, which will be uncomfortable but not sterile. 

We are invited to admit that something is not right in 

ourselves, in society and in the Church.to change, to turn 

around, to be converted.

Strong and challenging on this day are the words of the 

prophet Joel: Rend your hearts, not your garments: be

converted to the Lord your God. It is an invitation to all 

peoples; no one is excluded.

Rend your hearts, not your garments, artificial penance 

without guarantees for the future.

Rend your hearts, not your garments, formal and fulfilled 

fast which continues to keep us satisfied.

Rend your hearts, not your garments, superficial and 

egoistic prayer which does not reach the depth of our life to

 allow it to be touched by God.

Rend your hearts to say with the Psalmist: “we have sinned.”

 “Sin is the wound of the soul: Oh poor wounded one, 

recognize your Physician! Show him the wounds of your 

guilt. And given that our secret thoughts are not hidden from

 Him, make him hear the groan of your heart. Move Him to 

compassion with your tears, with your insistence. Importune

 Him! May He hear your sighs, make your pain reach Him so

 that, in the end, He can say to you: The Lord has forgiven 

your sin” (Saint Gregory the Great). This is the reality of our

 human condition. This is the truth that can bring us closer 

to genuine reconciliation with God and with men. It is not 

about discrediting self-esteem but about penetrating the 

depth of our hearts and of assuming the mystery of suffering

 and pain which has bound us for centuries, thousands of 

years, always.

Rend your hearts, so that through that crack we can really 

look at ourselves.

Rend your hearts, open your hearts, because only in a 

broken and open heart can the merciful love of God enter, 

who loves and heals us.

Rend your hearts says the prophet, and Paul asks us 

almost on his knees “be reconciled with God.” To change 

one’s way of living is the sign and fruit of this broken and

 reconciled heart by a love that surpasses us.

This is the invitation, given the many wounds that harm us 

and that can lead us to the temptation of hardening us: 

Rend your hearts to experience in silent and serene prayer 

the gentleness of God’s tenderness.

Rend your hearts to be able to love with the love with which

 we are loved, to console with the consolation that consoles 

us and to share what we have received.

The liturgical time that the Church begins today is not only 

for us, but also for the transformation of our families, our 

communities, our Church, our homeland, of the whole 

world. 

They are forty days to be converted to the very holiness of

 God; to become collaborators who receive grace and the

 possibility to reconstruct human life so that every man will 

experience the salvation that Christ won for us with his 

Death and Resurrection.

Together with prayer and penance, as a sign of our faith in 

the strength of Easter which transforms everything, we also 

prepare to begin as in other years our “solidaristic Lenten

 gesture.” As Church in Buenos Aires that marches towards

 Easter and that believes that the Kingdom of God is 

possible, we need to have spring from our hearts, broken by 

the desire of conversion and love, the grace and effective 

gesture that will alleviate the sorrow of so many brothers 

who walk with us. “No act of virtue can be great if it is not 

followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much

 time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on 

a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no

 good to others, you do nothing great” (Saint John 

Chrysostom).

This Year of Faith we are living is also an opportunity that 

God gives us to grow and mature in our encounter with the 

Lord who makes Himself visible in the suffering face of so 

many youth without a future, in the trembling hands of the

 forgotten elderly and in the vacillating knees of so many 

families that continue to face life without finding anyone to 

support them.

I wish you a holy Lent, a penitential and fruitful Lent and, 

please, I ask you to pray for me. May Jesus bless you and 

the Holy Virgin look after you.

Paternally,

Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J.

Buenos Aires, February 13, 2013, Ash Wednesday

[Translation by ZENIT]