Sunday 8 (B-2006): Fast and Feast
(Hosea 2:16b,17b,21-22)
Fasting is meant to focus us more deeply on God.
When we are too satisfied with ourselves, or too
distracted with other things, we can lose the sense of our need of God. We can thus lose our sense of dependency on him; indeed,
lose the sense of his very presence.
But
fasting is not only a question of food.
We can fast from anything which we know blocks
our relationship with God.
For example, we can fast from any type or length
of activity which leaves no time in our day for prayer.
Avoiding the occasion of sin is a form of fasting;
controlling our passions is a form of fasting; stopping negative thinking about ourselves and others is to fast.
Reorganizing our priorities in the day, in the
week and in the year around our religious duties is a form of fasting.
Any form of legitimate renunciation by which we
freely and deliberately put God first is a form of fasting.
Of course, we cannot renounce those things we
are actually supposed to do by using God as an excuse!
For example, a mother cannot “renounce”
looking after her children so as to spend the day in Church; a father cannot renounce his marital responsibilities because,
he might say, these “get in the way” of his relationship with God.
But a mother might introduce prayer into the way she looks after her children; a father might turn down overtime so as to put prayer before making
extra money that is not necessary.
When it comes to sin, fasting from it is of course a moral and religious obligation for everyone, all the time.
It would be ridiculous to say, “during Lent,
I will fast from sin, but when it’s over, I’ll enjoy it again with an Easter alleluia.”
We are called to holiness, not immorality.
There is little point in fasting from cookies
while indulging in gossip and slander.
To “play the game of Lent” by “giving
something up”, like candy or desserts, while making no effort to eradicate injustice, anger, resentment, lust or sloth
from my life, is to mock Lent, and God.
At best, giving up sugar ought to be an outward
sign that, deeper down, I am giving up bitterness towards my neighbor.
Even children can be educated to link their little
penances with a deeper spiritual value.
For example, every time I put away a nickel for
the poor, I will ask Jesus to make me rich in love. Every time I fast from candy between meals, I will ask Jesus to fill me
with his grace.
Fasting is thus an important form of disciplining
our freedom: to say no to something in order to say yes more sincerely to God.
But we can go much deeper.
Fasting not only focuses us on God, but, if done
in the right spirit, draws us much closer to him, into him.
By fasting, we are emptying ourselves in order
to say to the Lord, “You alone are my fulfillment,” or as we used to pray, “My God and my all! Deus meus et omnia!”
We fast from ourselves so as to feast on the Lord.
Is that not the meaning of the Eucharistic fast?
This is what our Lord wants from us.
The Lord wants us to fast as if we were withdrawing
to some kind of interior desert so that, as the prophet Hosea so beautifully puts it, “God will lead her into the desert
and speak to her heart.”
The word “her” refers to the people
of Israel, but we can apply it also both to the Church and to the individual soul.
The Lord lures us through fasting into the barrenness,
that is, away from any and all distractions that might steal our hearts.
Why does he want us in such a vulnerable situation?
Hosea tells us: “I will speak to her heart.” Not to our intellect, not for a conversation about curiosities, not
for a debate on doctrine: no, to our heart!
Think what it means for someone to speak to your
heart. Something they say or do registers in your heart, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Your heart is like a receiver
that moves when it receives a signal.
A message for the heart cannot be grasped by the
concepts of the mind or the words of the mouth. When the signal is one of love, it creates a bond between hearts through a
mysterious attraction which the mind cannot control or impede.
It is thus that God wants to speak to the heart
of the person who seeks him out, who silences the many other voices which compete for his heart.
But God will not compete.
He awaits in the silent and severe beauty of the
desert. For He is God, not man; he owns nothing of the competitive pride and deceit of the world.
He lures us by the mystery of his own fascination,
a fascination which does not lead to betrayal, like the fascination of sin, but to something every soul longs for, even when
it won’t admit it – especially when it won’t admit it.
What is that something?
Hosea again tells us: “I will espouse you
to me forever. I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy. I will espouse you in fidelity, and you shall
know the Lord.”
In the prayer of the desert, to which fasting
leads, the Lord seeks to espouse our souls. God wants to marry us in a marriage which far surpasses the marriage between a
man and a woman, however beautiful and all-consuming that may be.
In the marriage between the Lord and a searching
soul, the Lord invades that soul with his own divinity. He draws us into the innermost recesses of his own intimacy.
He seeks to identify himself with our souls, not
in a way that suffocates our own personal identity, but in a way that makes us understand that our truest identity is precisely
to be able to live with God, to live in God, indeed, to live as God.
The words Hosea uses are all attributes of God
himself: eternity, right and justice, love and mercy, fidelity. When a soul allows itself to be drawn to God, even through
simple things like fasting, it will eventually become like Him.
It will know him, not as an article of the Creed,
but in the way spouses know one another, in love, in intimacy and in total surrender.
This is the kind of knowledge of which Jesus speaks
when he says, “And eternal life is this: to know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
The kind of fasting of which I have spoken can
bring us to the feast of this kind of knowledge.
Let not then our fasting be without purpose. Let it
rather clear for us a pathway into the spiritual desert in which the Lord will speak to our hearts, espouse us to himself
and make us divine.
Msgr.
Peter Magee
Sunday
February 26th, 2006
Annunciation,
DC: 8.30 am
