Do We Really Have to Do This?
In a northern Minnesota town there lived a man named Lars. He was born and raised a Lutheran. Each Friday night after work, Lars would fire up his stove and cook a venison steak.
Normally, this would not bother his Catholic neighbors, except during Lent, when they were required to abstain from eating meat every Friday. Stuck with eating fish, cheese, and buttered noodles and bread, Catholics would just about die from the aroma coming from Lars’ house on Friday nights. The local Catholic parishioners asked their pastor to use his powers of persuasion to see if they could get Lars to convert to Catholicism.
The pastor was very persuasive, and Lars agreed that he would go through RCIA and convert to Catholicism. In fact, the pastor even arranged to catechize Lars himself so that he could be brought into the Catholic faith before Lent arrived the following year. After receiving the sacraments of Reconciliation, Eucharist and Confirmation, the pastor proudly told Lars, “Always remember: once you were a Lutheran, now you are a Catholic.”
Lent arrived and the Catholic community in the town thought that this Lent would indeed be different. No more “to die for” aromas coming out of Lars’ house during Lenten Fridays. And so the Catholic brothers and sisters were shocked when the first Friday after Ash Wednesday arrived, and the aroma of venison steak was again wafting from Lars’ house. Frustrated and angry, parishioners visited their pastor and asked him if the pastor had clued Lars in about Lenten fasting and abstinence requirements.
The pastor himself was surprised. So he decided to visit Lars’ house. It was an early spring evening, beautiful for Minnesota and Lars was cooking his venison with a window open. Father took in the wonderful smell, not sure whether to scold Lars or just simply explain the new responsibilities Lars must take on as a Catholic. Still not sure what he would say, the pastor looked into the house and overheard Lars praying over the venison. I was once a Lutheran, now I am Catholic, you were once venison, now you are a sturgeon.”
We are in the season of Lent. We are confronted with a season in which we take stock of our relationship with God, and attempt to move closer to Him through prayer, reading of Scripture, more frequent use of the sacraments, and acts of penance including, yes, fasting and abstinence.
In some important ways I suppose, I am an unlikely candidate to talk to you about fasting and abstinence. As you can tell by looking at me, I hate fasting and abstinence. I haven’t missed too many meals and I hate fish.
But fasting and abstinence is an important part of our faith. Why? Because first and foremost it was an important part of Christ’s life. It was part of his mission of salvation to his people. If we seek to journey with Christ, then we must be like Him. So fasting and abstinence are part of living an authentic Christian life.
We might think of fasting and abstinence only as an individual activity. But if we do, such practices become just a tedious chore. We can’t wait for 12:01 on Saturday morning, so we can snack on a ham sandwich and Fritos. We long for the passing of Good Friday. Then we won’t have to fast or abstain until nearly a year later, on Ash Wednesday. In short, we get hung up on fasting and abstinence at a superficial or mechanical level. We can then really resent it.
If, however, we think of fasting as communal, as a part of Christian and Catholic life, then we can see that the external observance of penitential practices like avoiding food between meals or abstaining from meat is embedded in a deeper action-filled faith that serves God and our world.
All three readings tonight (tomorrow) deal with the issue of sacrifice and the reality that sacrifice is a part of an authentic Christian life. Fasting and abstinence is conduct quite natural to a life dedicated to seeking God’s justice in our world. It is quite natural to someone who gives in order to receive, who puts others first.
Jesus’ whole life involved a deeper kind of fasting and abstinence, and a fasting and abstinence that was not just about food or the lack of it, but based on service to others in the most fundamental sense, even to the point of dying so that others could be returned to God.
And so, if we seek to follow him, our fasting and abstinence must also be more than food deep. It must also be based on service to God and others not just during Lent but all year round. Fasting and abstinence fundamentally is not a matter of missing snacks between meals two days a year, or abstaining from meat seven days a year, all in a condensed six week period.
Now don’t get me wrong. Symbolic actions are important or else the Church would not ask us to do them. They are a start. But let me dare say that if people thought of fasting and abstaining at a deeper level, it might be far easier to do symbolic fasting as well. The rituals of fasting and abstinence then become a symbolic celebration, a gateway if you will, to living the Gospel life in pursuit of justice and love for others. These rituals are then no longer a tedious ritualistic chore because they are accompanied by real charity toward our brothers and sisters.
What does it mean to fast and abstain at a deeper level? This deeper communal form of fasting and abstinence involves fasting and abstaining from oppression so that others not just you feel the freedom of the sons and daughters of God; it involves fasting and abstaining so others can be fed, fasting and abstaining from mindless materialism so the homeless can be sheltered, fasting and abstaining from accumulating obscene and unjust wealth so as to help the less fortunate of all kinds, fasting and abstaining from unjust wars so that people in other countries are not slaughtered, fasting and abstaining from violence so that life is respected to life at all of its stages is respected and protected.
If we can get to this deeper level of fasting and abstinence, we can see that, fasting and abstinence celebrates something unique about human beings. For only human beings are capable of offering sacrifice. And they are capable of offering sacrifice not just for the six weeks of Lent, but all year ’round. It is central to Christianity.
By following Christ’s way through communally based fasting, we fight for God’s justice on earth. Through effective fasting we come to understand that true love to God and others is self-emptying. We become truly free to become the unique persons he has called us to be. We become full members of a Christian community of love for God and love for others. And then we emulate the Trinity, which is a community of persons in oneness.
So Lars and his brother and sister Catholics need not worry about changing venison into sturgeon. For if they, and we, use Lent for prayer, sacrament, and Scripture, we can be transformed in Jesus Christ. The symbolic will be joined with the deeper practical everyday challenges and joys of the Christian life. Fasting and abstinence become not just food deep, but soul deep. And that is why we fast and abstain in the first place.