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]
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Can we resist all our ‘sensual’
readings and choose the Word to inspire and challenge us during the next 40
days? 
