Season of Training
Our diocese (Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter) keeps the ancient season of Pre-Lent. It lasts three weeks from Septuagesima Sunday to Shrove Tuesday (we have such cool words in our Patrimony!). You can think about it like a training season for Lent. Some of you took a class called pre-Calculus in high school to get you ready to study Calculus (I would have needed pre-pre-Calculus!). Pre-Lent is the same sort of thing. It intends to prepare us for the “observance of a Holy Lent” as the Church declares on Ash Wednesday. Why should we prepare for the Lenten Fast? Why can’t we just haul off and start fasting? Lent is the super bowl of all fasting. And, like the football super bowl, you must practice to do it well. We live in a culture that celebrates gain. Get more attention. Get more money. Get more leisure. Get more stuff… It can be hard to give up those things. And just why should we give them up anyway? Holy Mother Church teaches us to give up those things because they can become a weight around our neck, slowly and steadily, dragging us deeper into the darkness of sin and death. Detachment is the goal. Giving up things helps us to become detached from things. Things are not necessarily bad or evil. It’s the love of things that’s harmful (1 Timothy 6:10). Fasting helps us to detach from the potential to love things. While most people associate fasting with eating (eating is certainly part of fasting), it goes beyond that. Fasting trains us to reorient ourselves to the only one who can truly satisfy our deepest desires. God takes great delight in providing all that is necessary for our health and well-being. We do not have to fear fasting by imaging that God is unable to provide, or, worse, unwilling! This beautiful thought from Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque deserves some serious mediation: “Do not be afraid to abandon yourself unreservedly to His loving Providence, for a child cannot perish in the arms of a Father Who is omnipotent.” I invite you to join me this Pre-Lent for a ‘season of training’ by which we teach ourselves to fast from things that keep us stuck in our progress towards complete abandonment to God’s providence.
