Period To Review Our Lives

 

We fast to enhance self-discipline.

Reflection on Today’s Readings, Friday after Ash Wednesday, February 16th, 2024
Texts: Isaiah 58:1-9; Psalm 51:3-6,18-19; Matthew 9:14-15 

Lent is a period to review our lives. The readings often help us to do this. Today’s readings are among the readings that help us to review our ways of life. This question, today, is this: Is there anything we do and we do not know why we do them?  

Today’s gospel reading reminds us of the possibility of doing what we do not know why we do it. This happened to the disciples of John the Baptist. This is clear in their word: "Why do we and the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast?" They did not know why they fasted.  

The disciples of John and Pharisees fasted just because the law commanded it. They believed that just a denial of food to oneself for God’s sake is pleasing to God. Prophet Isaiah speaks of them thus: “Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that did righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.” 

Why have we fasted, and you see it not? 

Isaiah reminds us of the frustration of those who embrace such ways of life. Their devotions bear no fruits and are empty before God. Hence, Isaiah recounts their words thus “Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?” 

God tells us what makes our fasting empty and fruitless. He says, “Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.” Our ways of life count, denial of food to oneself is not enough to seek God’s favour. Fasting should engender good conduct, attitude and ways of life.  

We fast to enhance self-discipline, sobriety and deeper relationship with God and with neighbours. Hence, God says,  “Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? ... Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house” 

There is time for fasting

It is fasting which focuses on charity and spiritual growth that wins favour before God. Hence, Jesus answered the disciples of John thus: “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” There is time for fasting and it is when man needs to be human and grow spiritually.  

Isaiah affirms that genuine fasting is efficacious. He speaks of such fasting thus: “Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the  Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the  Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, Here I am.” If our fast is genuine, we should be sure that it is rewarding. 

Prayer  

Show gracious favour, O Lord, we pray, to the works of penance we have begun, that we may have strength to accomplish with sincerity the bodily observances we undertake. Amen (Collect) 

Fr. Andrew Olowomuke