These sundays served as a sort of front porch to Lent. . There was even an old tradition, three weeks prior to Lent, that the parish priest would take a scroll with the word “Alleluia” written on it, and bury it in the church yard, as Alleluia is not said or sung during Lent until we celebrate Jesus rising from the tomb. On the Old Calendar, the Sunday prior to Ash Wednesday was called Quinquegesima Sunday, as we are about 50 days from Easter. Even though Vatican II reformed the liturgical calendar, it is still important to prepare for Lent, which begins this wednesday with the solemn imposition of Ashes on our foreheads.
You may have read in the bulletin this week and last week how during Lent we are to engage in what are called the three traditional Lenten Penitential Practices. We show our commitment to ongoing Christian conversion through the three practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Before Wednesday, come up wit ha Lenten plan for yourself and for your family: what will your Lenten prayer consist of, what will your Lenten fasting consist of, what will your lenten almsgiving consist of. The three Lenten practices are of great importance; by them, the Holy Spirit prepares us for the new life of Easter.
St. Peter Chyrsologus, about 1600 years ago wrote of the importance of the three Lenten practices: He wrote: “Prayer, mercy and fasting: These three are one, and they give life to each other. Fasting is the soul of prayer; mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing.”
Prepare well for Lent, that Lent may prepare you well for Easter. For, as Catholics we take preparation very seriously, don’t we? Periods of preparation precede the reception of the sacraments. An adult preparing for baptism goes through a thorough process of learning the Church’s doctrine, learning about the prayer life of the Church, learning about our moral teachings before they are made members of the Church in the sacrament of baptism.
Hopefully, it isn’t too distant of a memory, but when you were preparing for your first holy communion, you learned about the Mass, you learned about how the Lord nourishes us with His body and blood in the eucharist. And as young people you also prepared for the sacrament of confirmation; you learned about the gifts of the holy spirit: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, fortitude, which are strengthened in you in Confirmation.
The seminarian preparing for Holy Orders, prepares 8 or 9 years for the life of ministry as an ordained priest. And Christians preparing for the Sacrament of Marriage meet with a priest over several months prior to the wedding: they discuss healthy communication and conflict resolution, raising children, they attend a pre-Cana day, and examine the scriptural foundations for Christian marriage and the Church’s doctrine.
The two most important feasts of the Church year, Easter and Christmas, are both preceded by periods of preparation. The season of Advent helps us to prepare for Jesus’ coming and the celebration of his birth at Christmas. And the season of Lent helps us to prepare for the new life available to us through Jesus’ Passion Death and Resurrection celebrated at Easter.
We prepare for Easter by getting back to Christian basics: the prayer, fasting, and acts of charity, the repentance of sin, that should mark the entirety of the Christian life.
The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Lencten, which is the lengthening of days as we approach springtime, the season of new Growth. And any good gardener knows that before the spring planting season can begin, you first need to clear away the clutter, the dead weeds. Or just as our houses need spring cleaning, so that we can live more peacefully, happily, and blessedly, Lent is the time to clean up our souls.
I think this is what makes the Lenten practice of fasting so important. It's certainly not as pleasant as the other two. Most of us typically enjoy and find peace in spending quiet time with God in prayer. Most of us derive satisfaction in engaging in almsgiving and works of charity. The fasting though is the least enjoyable, but it is of the utmost importance.
Many of the great saints spoke of the importance of fasting. St. Thomas More said: “The scriptures are full of places that prove fasting to be not the invention of man but the institution of God...And that the fasting of one man may do good unto another. Even our savior proved this when he said that some kind of devils cannot be cast out without prayer and fasting.” In other words, there are many evils in our world and in our hearts that the Lord wishes to deliver us from, through fasting.
By fasting, I refer to of course, the abstaining from meat on ash wednesday, good friday, and the fridays of lent, and also the restricted food intake on ash wednesday and good friday. But I also mean the fasting of “giving something up for lent”. Something good, something you enjoy, something that makes your mouth water, or something that will free you up to engage more in prayer and charity.
These days, I challenge the kids over in the school to consider giving up for Lent video games and social media. And when I mention that, their groans are almost like those of an exorcism. “No, not that, anything but that.” To which I always respond, that which you least want to give up, is probably a sign of what the Holy Spirit wants you to give up.
For some of us it might be video games or social media or television or youtube. For some it might mean alcohol or snacking between meals, taking second helpings, dessert, junk food, or for the bravest among us, caffeine. Just be careful with that one. I knew a priest who gave up caffeine for Lent, and that first week you couldn’t talk to Father because he'd bite your head off.
Lenten fasting is not the same as dieting, for its primary aim is not the elimination of love handles, but to help us love God more than we love the things of the world, to help us to remember that it is not by bread alone that we subsist, but true human flourishing comes by making our lives into living sacrifices, obedient to God's will in all things.
In the Gospel, our Lord tells us the importance of removing the splinter from our own eye that we may judge rightly and of pruning all that does not bear good fruit in our life. Through Lenten prayer, almsgiving, and especially fasting, we prune that which so often bears rotten fruit, we remove that which keeps us from judging rightly and following rightly the ways of God, that we may live ever more fully and faithfully the new life God wants for us for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
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