In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Our Lady, refuge of sinners, St. Joseph.
Saints, Perpetua and Felicity.
Our Patron, Saints and Guardian Angels.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
We, as Christians, especially Catholics who fast,
we do not fast in the same way or for the same reasons as Buddhists and non-Christian monks, you might say,
fast or do penance.
They don't even do it.
They don't call it penance.
They just practice asceticism as a reason for dying to their material self
because they think material matter is somehow evil.
And so they're trying to become very stoic, you know, when they do their penance or their mortification.
They are just treating their material body as if it's some kind of evil.
So they're trying to deny it something.
And it's all kind of a...
misplaced understanding of who they are and their metaphysical reality of the world and material and spiritual.
So they don't fast or do they pray in the same reason that we do.
They don't pray to have contact with a personal God either. They just meditate to
interiorly, you might say,
die to themselves,
to their material being that they don't think is good.
In the first place.
But we, as Christians, we fast and pray because we have a personal God.
We pray because we can have contact with that personal God.
We can touch God and speak to Him and
communicate with Him and He can communicate to us.
And the whole
point is that God so loved us that He has
created us. And so therefore this whole
aspect of
supernatural being who loves us and
communicates to us is not at all on the radar screen of
non-christians and especially the Buddhist monk. They don't... that is not even a concept that they
they even touch upon.
And so we do fasting not because we think our bodies are evil or because matter is evil, but because
we need to discipline it.
We need to
bring it under control of our will and our will especially enlightened by faith because we know that our body, because of original sin,
will tend to do what is its lower nature than its higher nature. And it's all part of disciplining
ourselves. And that is
all done because we know that God loves us and wants us to to do that. That we want to be
pleasing to Him. So therefore we have to
practice asceticism. And also because we want to offer these
denials of our self as a way of saying that I love God more than I love myself.
I love God so much that I'll even deny myself some pleasure, whether it be food or drink or
comfort of some sort. And
this is that
elevates our penance to become an act of charity.
Towards God. And
if we're doing penance properly, and we're truly
mortifying ourselves, dying to ourselves,
fasting and
abstinence, whatever it may be, it should lead us to look out to our neighbor as well in acts of charity.
If we deny ourselves, if we're trying to
do less to ourselves, pamper ourselves or whatever, it should, with the help of God's grace and charity,
lead us to therefore see that we want to become more conscious of our neighbor and his needs.
Because our Lord is saying,
the prophet Isaiah, God is saying through him, I'm not just asking you to, you know,
deny yourselves.
Why do we fast? You know that the people in the prophet Isaiah, they weren't fasting for the proper reason. They were trying to somehow
fast to have God, you know, clap and you know congratulate them.
But that's not what God was going to do.
He says on your fast days you carry out your own pursuits and drive all your laborers.
Your fast ends in quarreling and fighting, striking with wicked claw.
You know if you're fasting and
you're a bear to live with,
because you're so
unhappy,
because you've denied yourself, and you're using your wicked claw on your neighbor,
then you're always
obviously aren't fasting for the right reasons,
and your fasting has lost the whole, you might say, purpose
for what it's supposed to help you to do
has become more charitable,
more concerned about the needs of others.
So the prophet is saying, you know,
you need to do your penance with this whole aspect of charity involved.
It's not just like, well, I'm going to see how much I can not eat today
because I'm going to show how, you know, how mortified I am.
It's almost like some people can do these things out of a sense of pride
than out of a sense of what the whole purpose of fasting and abstinence
is supposed to help us acquire the virtue of humility.
And so this whole proper mindset that we should have
that go along with fasting is that we're to deny ourselves
because out of love for God and love of neighbor,
and especially love for ourselves in the proper sense,
that we love ourselves enough to say no to ourselves,
especially because we know that we can pamper ourselves to the excess.
Even St. Teresa of Avila reminds us that a life of luxury,
and when she means by a life of luxury,
she means overindulgence,
and a life of prayer cannot coexist.
We cannot pamper ourselves
or have,
you know,
so, you know,
take care of our sensual appetites to an excess,
and we will never pray.
We won't have any, at all, any reference to God,
and that's what's happened in our world today.
So many people are caught up in the materialism,
the hedonism,
the sensuality of our age,
which is, you know, if it feels good, do it,
that they don't even have any concept of,
of turning to God,
and prayer.
And that's,
reminds me of this,
one of the architects of the Bolshevik Communist Revolution in Russia,
who said,
I cannot get a seminarian to stop thinking about God,
if I argue about God does not exist.
I'm not going to get that seminarian to,
to,
deny or become an atheist if I try to argue on the,
on the level of intellectual pursuit of,
you know, God doesn't exist,
because I don't have a leg to sit on,
I don't have a leg to stand on.
But if I were to excite his passions,
then I'll get him to forget God.
And that is what the whole modern media,
especially,
and it's, of course,
the devil has put it to use well,
is to excite our passions,
you know, lust, all the things.
Sooner or later, a person will forget God,
because it just has a tendency that those things,
our passions,
when they're let go to do whatever they want to do,
they will, of course,
blind us to the higher realities.
It says only the pure of heart shall see God.
So obviously the impure of heart cannot see God.
They can't see him because they have blinded themselves
by giving into all their passions and sensual desires.
So the reason why we as Christians,
fast and do penance is because of love for our God,
love of neighbor,
and a true love of ourself that we need to deny ourselves,
because we have this reality,
which was reminded on the first day of Lent,
on Ash Wednesday,
that remember, man, you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
It is to remind us back to the garden of our first parents,
where pride led to the fall.
And we have to remind ourselves,
that if because of the original sin,
we have this wounded nature,
and that grace has to be the solution
and is the cure for what we have,
but we also have to cooperate
and we need to practice virtue.
And one of the virtues is temperance.
And temperance is so important today
because it means that we are able to know,
we can set limits,
that we can mortify ourselves,
we don't just let everything go,
as it seems to be the modern motto of mankind today,
just let everything go.
And it's true that in one sense,
you can say that the first sin of our parents
was a sin of gluttony,
because God said,
don't eat of that apple of the tree
in the middle of the garden.
They had all other kinds of food,
they didn't need it.
So they ate it because they wanted to taste it
just for the sake of taste,
tasting it.
And so temperance is so important.
Mortifying ourselves really is a very important aspect
of Lent.
And because we mortify ourselves,
deny ourselves,
we should therefore have time
and things that we can share with others,
that we deny ourselves so that we can help others,
help them by offering up our penances,
for the salvation of souls first and foremost,
but also have material things that we can share
because we're not consuming so much as we did before.
And that this whole age in which we live in consumerism
is that we have a lot of poor people.
We have a lot of people in need because,
well, we consume and we don't think about our neighbor.
Because as we know,
the whole spiritual reality is that when we feed
a passion, it doesn't get satisfied.
That's the whole problem with our,
you never can have enough.
And that's why we have to set limits
by mortifying ourselves,
by our willing to say,
okay, I have to therefore say no to myself
so that I can say yes to God.
That's the whole point.
If we don't have that reality or that intention of,
of charity and love of God and love of neighbor,
our penances are going to be like St. Paul says,
I can give myself up to be burned,
but I have not charity.
I'm a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
And it doesn't have any meaning for the real purpose
for what we're doing it.
So as we practice our penances during Lent,
let us not forget to always renew our intention
of why we're doing that.
And maybe to remind ourselves every morning
that I'm going to deny myself,
not just because I want to see,
oh, how little I can eat today to so how,
you know, master I am of myself,
but rather how I can see that I can offer these things
as acts of love to deny myself for the missions
or for the sick, the suffering,
those who are addicted to drugs or whatever it may be,
that we have some intention
or a charitable outlook into why we're doing these things.
And also to look out to see who may be in need in our midst
and attend to them by being charitable and kind
and loving towards those around us.
That we don't strike them with wicked claw,
but we first of all look to them
and see what we can do to act as Christ towards them.
Let's ask our lady in a special way
who practiced penance, not because she had to,
but because she had that love of God
and denied herself for the sake of sinners
and for love of us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.