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Fasting and Feasting

| SPIRITUAL LIFE | SPIRITUALITY

Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Matthew 9:14-17

The disciples of John came to him, saying, "Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?" And Jesus said to them, "The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

Introductory Prayer: Lord, I come to you in this meditation ready to do whatever it is you ask. Left to myself, I often take the easy and convenient path; yet I know the way of a Christian is through the narrow gate. In you I find the reason to abandon the easy path for a more perfect mission of love. I’m ready to learn the meaning of your command: “Follow me.”

Petition: Lord, help me to value the place of fasting in my life.

1. Creating Hunger for God: Fasting has its place in the life of holiness. Like the precept of poverty, fasting is the purposeful privation of a natural good to make the soul more sensitive to the supernatural goods of the Spirit. It is the silencing of the flesh in order to feel more intensely a spiritual hunger for God. Just as the Israelites had to grow hungry in the desert before they could worthily receive the bread from heaven in the gift of manna, so in our life there is place to put aside the distractions of what is good for that which is holy. In the practice of self-denial, we will find the spiritual receptivity of a new wineskin that will not burst when, through prayer, God pours in the new wine of the Kingdom.

2. Respecting the End: The practice of piety is not an end in itself. Rather, it is oriented to the ultimate end of the spiritual life: union with Christ. Christ must unweave John’s disciples from an excessive rigor in their spiritual life, one that has lost God as its proper object. Spiritual pride can grow subtly in persons who take upon themselves forms of devotion or asceticism for their own sakes. In all things, even in the spiritual, we have to look at the end. If some spiritual practice does not lead us to live God’s will and his presence in a more loving manner, then it is of no use to us.

3. Fasting and the Passion Lead to Spiritual Feasting: The moment of the Passion will come; the days of mourning will arrive. The fasting that the disciples lived and that the Church lives is one of uniting ourselves to the suffering Christ. Self-denial in order to do God’s will becomes a participation in Christ’s Redemption. Christ’s closest friends will want to share his sorrow, suffer his privations and make his holocaust visible to others through their sacrificial way of life. May I be ready to live union with Christ, embracing periodic acts of self-denial and the ongoing crosses of my duty for love of souls and his Kingdom.

Conversation with Christ: Lord, help me practice true devotion and sacrifice. Renew in me a holy desire to seek you above all things, so that all I possess in my life is ordered to serving you better and glorifying your name.

Resolution: I will make a special sacrifice to fulfill a duty of my state in life, uniting myself more to the suffering Christ.

One Bread, One Body

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All Issues > Volume 29, Issue 4

<< Saturday, July 6, 2013 >>

St. Maria Goretti

Genesis 27:1-5, 15-29
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Psalm 135:1-6

Matthew 9:14-17
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MASQUERADE

"Rebekah then took the best clothes of her older son Esau that she had in the house, and gave them to her younger son Jacob to wear; and with the skins of the kids she covered up his hands and the hairless parts of his neck." —Genesis 27:15-16

Jacob coveted Esau's blessing and used a masquerade to steal it. The measure Jacob measured with was measured back (Mt 7:2) to him when he woke up the morning after his wedding to find that his new bride was not his beloved Rachel, but her sister Leah, who had masqueraded as Rachel (Gn 29:25).

We humans are so prone to deception and covetousness that God felt it necessary to have the last two of the ten commandments forbid coveting someone else's spouse or goods (Ex 20:17; Dt 5:21). God knows that we tend to think "the grass is greener on the other side." We want to "keep up with the Joneses." We are dissatisfied with "ours" and want "theirs."

Before Jacob was born, the Lord promised that Jacob would be especially blessed and would surpass Esau (Gn 25:23). So why should Jacob want to covet a lesser blessing (and bear all the horrible consequences of stealing it as well)? All Jacob had to do was be himself and wait for God's blessing to come in due time.

There's a Jacob lurking in us. We envy and "cannot acquire, so [we] quarrel and fight" (Jas 4:2). Instead, the Lord commands us: "Be content with what you have" (Heb 13:5). And what is it we have? We have a place in Christ's Body prepared (Jn 14:2) for us from the beginning of time (Eph 1:4-5; 2:10; Heb 11:40). We have "every spiritual blessing in the heavens!" (Eph 1:3)

Why settle for less? Live the life God has assigned to you (1 Cor 7:17). Be all that you can be — in Jesus.

Prayer: Jesus, I repent of envy and covetousness. I repent of dissatisfaction with Your plans for Me. Your will be done in me.

Promise: "All that the Lord wills He does." —Ps 135:6

Praise: The mother of St. Maria Goretti forgave her daughter's murderer, and later attended Mass with him.