+ Today on this third day of Lent we again get preliminary
instructions on how to proceed through this powerful yet simple Season. In
preparing to get a newer depth of meaning for this year’s Holy Week Services of
the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus, as we live through our days with
many Passions, Deaths and Resurrections in full drama, or smaller ones, the
Church asks us to focus as soon as possible on spiritual realities: and so she
recommends “fasting” as a way to zero in our GPS’s.
When we deny ourselves of food
and drink, for example, the intensity of the lack, makes us more away of what
truly matters in life, and we begin to sort out what kinds of “food” and
“drink” are really important to us: both the kind we can see and consume, but
also the kind that is to nurture us spiritually.
And so we “give up” stuff –
probably stuff that we don’t really need to be consuming so voraciously anyway.
But what the Church really has
in mind is found in the first reading from God’s self-revelation to us, the
Scriptures, from the Prophet Isaiah: God’s spokesman: fast with a pure heart and conscience, give up cheating and stealing and
lying and other acts of uncharity, but also then DO SOMETHING RIGHT GOOD AND
JUST AND MERCIFUL: “break unjust fetters, especially the kind that we ourselves
have imposed, share your bread in many and sundry ways with the hungry of mind,
body, spirit, shelter the homeless who are wandering around like sheep without
a shepherd: and this is more than the man at the intersection of our busy urban
stop lights, clothe the naked, physically and spiritually, and for God’s sake
DON’T TURN YOUR BACK ON YOUR OWN – for this is a most grievous offense in the
sight of God, and the Holy Family in heaven.
Then, our inner lights shall
begin to glow – our heart-light – and we will find healing, and joy and a real
purpose in our own lives – our integrity will become solid and when we call out
in desperation to the Lord: he will say “I
AM HERE” what do you need? how can I help you?
With
the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption!
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