Focusing on "Holy Desire"

Lent has to be my favorite season of the Church year. The reason for that is that I'm sort of weak. I get distracted, I get busy, and I get tired; I lose my focus. LENT is the best antidote that I've ever found for helping me get back on track.

Some years are better than others. With Lent starting later this year, I wasn't "caught" by surprise... there was enough of a "break" for me that I started to really look forward to Lent, and so I do have some real hopes this time, this year.

This was also the first time in my memory that I was asked to give the homily for Lent, and so it was the first time that I was able to really put my own thoughts and feelings down on paper about it. A friend's notes gave me the impetus to talk about the three traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving ... so here it is.

Ash Wednesday, 2011

Good evening, and welcome to Lent. In a few minutes, we will mark the beginning of this holy season by receiving ashes on our foreheads in the sign of a cross. The season of Lent lasts forty days in imitation of the time Jesus spent in the desert before starting his public ministry. Of course, Lent leads up to and prepares us for the great celebration of Holy Week beginning with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he celebrated his Last Supper before his Passion, Death and Resurrection. But what are we to do during these forty days? What is the purpose of imitating Jesus' time in the desert? St. Augustine summarized it powerfully: "The entire life of a good Christian," he said, "is in fact an exercise of holy desire. We do not see the Holy One we long for, but the very act of desiring God prepares us, so that when God comes we may see and be utterly filled."

In other words, what St. Augustine is telling us is not that we have to annihilate our desires; sometimes we think that about Lent, or about anything that’s penitential. On the contrary our desires are often all too small-minded. We look for fulfillment in what this world offers. God, however, wants us to have so much more – God’s very own Self. During Lent we undertake practices that intensify our desire, that increase our longing, for God. Jesus spoke about them in today's Gospel: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. They are sometimes called the penitential practices.

Of these three practices, prayer has first place. Prayer, really, is the beginning, the middle, and the end. Our hearts were made for an eternal relationship with God, and that relationship begins in this life, or it does not begin at all. If we desire friendship - that is, a relationship with another human being - we have to do things with that person, be in the other's presence; talk, and listen. Friendship will not happen automatically. The same applies in order to have a relationship with God. The most important prayer for Christians is what we are doing right now, participating in the Mass: making ourselves fully present, around the table; remembering Jesus together, breaking and sharing, together, the very person of Jesus, the one who is the perfect revelation of God. Of course there are other ways of praying too: Eucharistic adoration, meditation, reading and praying over the Bible, or spiritual reading of various kinds - or even turning off the car radio and thanking God for God’s many gifts to us. Prayer is the foundation for the Christian life - it opens the way to an eternal relationship with God.

After prayer comes fasting. This is tricky for us today, because many people obsess about food. I know it is tricky for me, because I really would like to lose a few pounds! But the goal of fasting is not to have a sleek body one can be proud of. And people should enjoy food and the conviviality that often accompanies a good meal. However, if we look to the example of the saints – large or small, they all had this in common: they practiced voluntary self-denial, which is what fasting is. Fasting should also find a place in our lives, whether it’s fasting from food or some other form of self-denial.

At a very minimum all of us are asked to follow the rules of no meat today and on the seven Fridays of Lent, and most of us are asked to fast today and on Good Friday. But until about 1960, generations of Christians fasted – not just on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, but every weekday during Lent. Tonight I’d really encourage you to go much further than the minimum. You might do a full Lenten fast. Or you might give up for all of Lent some food you particularly enjoy. Or cut out eating between meals or – I am speaking to my own weakness now – give up that snack before bedtime. I know when I make a conscious decision to skip that bedtime snack, a voice inside of me whispers, “Well, you don’t want go to bed hungry!” But I also know that when I do it, I survive just fine.

If you’re a young person, talk to your parents about fasting; because you need to eat well enough to be healthy -- and if you’re a senior adult, you might want to check with your doctor. But fasting in some form is good for us; and if for some reason it should not be fasting from food, it should be another appropriate form of self-denial. Fasting reminds us that if we are serious about our spiritual life we must be able to deny ourselves, to deny our immediate impulses; because if we can’t do that we will find it impossible to take up our cross and follow Jesus… because our own desires will be stronger than our desire for God.

Finally, we come to almsgiving. I admit that I do not donate to every person or cause that I become aware of. That’s not being stingy – it’s the desire to be a good steward, to use resources in the best possible way to help others. For me during Lent this means supporting our parish Lenten charities (see sheet) -- it’s something that all of us here can do together. But for me personally, I also focus more intently on other people in need too, or the groups serving them, those whom I personally support because I know them... I’ve personally gotten involved with them. And bluntly, if you don’t have people or charities like that in your life, you’re not trying very hard. Almsgiving is especially about solidarity with others. It’s about desire for God expressing itself in a love for those God holds especially dear.

St. John Chrysostom, one of the doctors of the early Church, once said that after we have satisfied our own basic needs and the needs of those we are directly responsible for, all the rest really belongs to the poor. He said this to the people of his time: “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The excess goods we hold on to are not ours, but theirs.” Lent is a good time to look at the things we spend our money on. Let’s look at our checkbook – or maybe better, look at our credit card statement. Does it reflect a commitment to God and to our neighbors in need?

We don’t do this so that people will think us generous. Someone who gives one dollar might really be more generous than any of us. And on the other hand, Bill Gates gives away more in a week than any of us will give away in a lifetime, but that does not necessarily mean he is more generous than you or I are. We are not called to give by human standards, but according to God's generosity. If Christians everywhere did this, our world would not have God’s other children living in dire need when we are not.

Tonight when you go home, I would like you to take with you something very practical to remind you of these three basics. It is a flat piece of cardboard that you can form into a small box called a “Rice Bowl.” Place it on your dining table as a constant reminder all through Lent. You could even say the prayer on the side - and as you do some voluntary fasting, you might place in the box what you save, something extra to turn in at the end of Lent.

So … welcome to Lent, my friends. As we receive the ashes on our foreheads, let's remember the purpose of Lent: a focused exercise of holy desire … through the penitential practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.

Deacon Denny Duffell, St. Bridget Parish