As I See It

by Fr. Vin

Lenten disciplines

Lent is the time to prepare for Easter.  Our tradition recommends three disciplines to get us into shape: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (charity to the poor).  Let’s look at each in turn.

Prayer: Our central prayer is the one Christ left us, the Mass.  Why not make Lent a time to learn to pray the Mass more fully (which is what our parish Lenten renewal is designed to help you to do)?  Be careful to prepare, to be on time, to stay ‘til the end, to read the scriptures beforehand (the citations are in the Bulletin each week).  If your schedule allows, come to Mass on weekdays as well – every day, or at least a few each week.  And pray to be changed by the Mass, which is, after all, about just this: God bringing new life out of the deadness in us.

Fasting: The tradition talks about fasting from meat, food, and drink.  (The regulations are elsewhere in the Bulletin.)  But today I suspect that the greater need is to fast from the mass-media.  It regularly corrupts our language and sense of the truth (especially in an election year), mocking God’s gift of language (and his Son the Word).  It gives us doses of vice as desirable – greed, lust, anger, and perhaps most of all, sloth.  So for Lent decide to turn it off: Turn off the radio or CD in the car; listen to nature, not an iPod, if you exercise outdoors; read something worthwhile (Catholic magazines like America, U.S. Catholic, Catholic Digest, or the like would be a good substitute).  And resolve to use the computer and internet for work and communication only, not for play and chat and games.  In a society in which most of us are watching our eating (and waistlines) anyway, fasting from food has only symbolic meaning (which is not to say we shouldn’t do it).  But fasting from media might actually help our souls.  You might use the time you save to attend one of the parish scripture-study sessions each week, and join in our shared renewal that way.

Almsgiving.  Giving to the poor isn’t just a matter of meeting their practical needs; it changes us as well.  Most of us are good at giving to evident needs, such as the recent need of the parish in Wyandanch after the fire there.  But perhaps the discipline we need to work on this Lent is to learn to plan our giving, to meet needs that don’t make such an impact on our emotions.  Most of the needs of the poor are invisible to us (although highly-visible to them).  I recommend making almsgiving a parish event, not just a personal one: join with other parishioners here and throughout the diocese by making a pledge to the Catholic Ministries Appeal.  (I do this myself.  I make a pledge of 1% of my income each Ash Wednesday as my Lenten almsgiving.)  I find it mystifying that only about 10% of parish households take part in the Appeal; I consider it an obligation of discipleship, a marker of membership in the wider church and a way to care for the largely-invisible poor throughout Long Island in Christ’s name.  If you haven’t given in the past, I encourage you to make at least a one-time donation.  If you’ve made one-time donations in the past, see whether your budget allows you, by making a sacrifice (there’s that Lenten term again!), to give something each month through a pledge.  If you’ve been pledging, consider raising the amount.  This is a key way we deepen our faith.  (When a troubled priest wrote to Cardinal John Henry Newman, perhaps the greatest intellect of the church in the 19^th century and now in the process of canonization for his holiness, asking the cardinal how he could quiet his doubts about the faith, Cardinal Newman had a two-word reply: “Give alms!”)

Prayer.  Fasting. Almsgiving.  Each discipline is meant to reshape us, so that we can be worthy of the new life Christ promises at Easter.  And each is also meant to make us worthy examples for those who will be baptized into our communion at the Easter Vigil.  So think of your Lenten disciplines not just as individual projects, but as a parish-wide renewal, so that we can be what Christ calls us to be: a living sign of his holiness among us.  Until next week, peace.

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