Our Collect for Ash Wednesday describes the holy season of Lent as “this campaign of Christian service.” This prayer goes on to note that we begin this campaign “with holy fasting.”1 Since both service and fasting are mentioned in the opening prayer, right from the start we have the trifecta: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
There is a reason liturgy is prima theologia or first theology. There is no better way of learning about faith than to actively participate in Mass, what the Church calls assisting at Mass. Hence, we should attentively listen to the prayers of the Sacred Liturgy.
While addressed to God, these prayers constitute our prayer, not just those of the priest. After all, by virtue of baptism, the Church is made a kingdom of priests, offering not just prayers and sacrifices but our entire selves to God through Christ. Better assisting better at Mass is a great Lenten commitment!
I am convinced that there is a strong correlation between the three fundamental spiritual disciplines, taught by our Lord Himself in today’s Gospel, and the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. Faith correlates to praying, hope to fasting, and love to almsgiving. Just as hope is the flower of faith and love their fruit, fasting flows from prayer to sacrifice to self-giving service.
Just as hope is the trickiest of the theological virtues to pin down, fasting is the hardest of the fundamental spiritual disciplines to undertake. When fasting, we give up for a specified period something we need to live, namely food. Through fasting, we make the Lord’s reply to the devil’s first temptation- to turn rocks into bread to satisfy His hunger- our own:
One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God2Where is your hope? What or who gives you hope? What is it that you want from life? What is true happiness and how is it achieved? How does your hope structure and shape your life? Moreover, how does the structure of your life reveal your hope?
For the imposition of ashes, which serves as the penitential rite, there are two formulae: First, is the most familiar: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Alternatively: “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”3
I don’t know about you, but I don't have to come to Church to be reminded of my mortality. As parents, mentors, beloved colleagues and parishioners, friends, cousins, etc., grow infirm and even die, I’m reminded of this inevitable fact very often. This how reality makes me mindful that I am dust and to dust I shall return.
It is because, by the grace of God, I believe in the Gospel, which is nicely summarized by Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, that I find hope not in death but through it. Repenting is not a one-off thing. Rather, it is a continual, lifelong process of conversion.
To repent is to change, to convert, to be ever more conformed to the image of Christ. En español, la segunda fórmula es “Conviertete y cree en el evangelio.” Si, es conviértete no esta arrepientete. In Spanish, the second formula translates as “Be converted and believe in the Gospel,” not “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” This gets to the heart of the matter regarding not only of Ash Wednesday and of Lent but Christian life. Esto llega al meollo de la cuestión, no solo en lo que respecta al Miércoles de Ceniza y la Cuaresma, sino también a la vida cristiana.
Practically, what it means to repent, to be converted, is to engage in this “campaign of Christian service.” Our engagement in this campaign is, in large part, what constitutes our “battle against spiritual evils.”4 As Christians, we don’t fight fire with fire. To extend the analogy, we fight fire with water. In this, we heed Saint Paul’s exhortation to not only not be overcome by evil, but to “overcome evil with good.”5 Prayer and fasting are what distinguish our service, our diakonia, as characteristically "Christian.”
According to the Collect, fasting is our weapon of self-restraint. Learning not to always put yourself first is a demanding thing. It requires training. Sacrifices like eating less to give more to the poor, spending less time online or watching television to spend more time praying and serving others, especially those in need, are what we are urged to do not only for Lent, but for life. This is how we become what Saint Paul calls Christians in our second reading: “ambassadors for Christ.”6
1 Roman Missal. Lent. Ash Wednesday.↩
2 Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3.↩
2 Roman Missal. Lent. Ash Wednesday.↩
4 Ibid.↩
5 Romans 12:21.↩
6 2 Corinthians 5:20.↩
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