As we are entering into the month of March, we are also entering into the Holy Season of Lent by celebrating the Ash Wednesday on 5th of March. To walk as pilgrims of Hope in this Jubilee year, the holy season of Lent is very important. This is one of the most important period of the Liturgical Year. During Lent the church asks us to do three things. It is really activity oriented; that is to pray, to fast and to give Alms. I want to say something simple about all these three essential Lenten activities; to pray, to fast and to give Alms.
First of all to pray. I always liked the definition of St. John of Damascus about prayer. He says to pray is to raise the mind and heart to God. In the course of the day we are preoccupied with so many things; our job, our family, our duties, relationship issues etc. We are obsessed with all these. It is okay. But the trouble is in that process we rarely raise our mind and hearts to God. Prayer is a kind of friendship with God. It is cultivating a relationship with God. Not leaving behind everything else, but all of these must be related to God. But prayer is explicitly turning in to our friendship and relationship with God. So during Lent we are asked to pray more intensely. Once the famous spiritual author Thomas Merton was asked, what is the best thing I can do to improve my life of prayer. And Merton responded, “Take the time? I really like that. He says take the time, it means you want to cultivate friendship with someone and you never spend time with that person, never see him or her and never call him or her. Then we cannot have friendship. The same thing with God. We take the time to make friendship with God. But how do you do it. Now there are thousand ways to Pray, that depends on your own personality, style, etc. I would like to suggest a couple of things; the Rosary prayer. You have rosaries all over, in your home, on the statues, on your neck, in your car. Now take it out and pray it during this Lent. I guarantee your life will change. Pray the rosary during the Lent. All the other prayers. The priests and religious can take the Liturgy of hours seriously. Try to be faithful to it in the morning, noon and evening. Also the easy prayer for all is the “Jesus prayer”. Jesus, son of the Living God, have mercy on us”. That is the Jesus prayer. You say it over and over again. May be in the course of 5 minutes, may be half an hour and may be the whole day. But the Jesus prayer is a great way of focusing our minds and hearts to God who is always present in us. Another simple way of prayer is meditation. You can do it for half an hour at least in the morning, noon or at the end of the day as your convenience. This is to put yourself in the presence of God. You can say Lord here I am; Lord show me yourself today; Lord guide me today. Maybe you can meditate on the Gospel of the day. St. Francis De Sales recommended to his followers to meditate half an hour daily and he continued to say of course if you are busy then you must meditate one hour daily. Meditation is a concrete way of raising our minds and hearts to God. Following Archbishop Fulton Sheen another beautiful way of raising our minds and hearts to God is spending daily one hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Preferably every priest should spend at least half an hour daily in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the morning before the offering of the Holy Eucharist. The Holy Eucharist is the source and submit of Christian Life. It is the greatest form of prayer Maybe you are attending the Sunday Mass regularly. In Lent you can start coming for week days mass. May be whatever prayer you are doing, intensify it during this Lent.
The second aspect of Lent is to fast. Now let us keep this in mind that we catholic are not puritanists or Anti – materialists to say that the natural desires for food, drinks, sex and pleasure are bad things. We are not dualist to say that body and all that is connected to the body are bad. No, Fasting should have nothing to do with that type of fussy, anti-materialist puritanism. Here is why we fast. Thomas Merton says that the natural desires have to be disciplined. He says children come to parents with lots of desires. But the parents do not give all that. They discipline them. There are naturally good desires in us. The desire for food, drinks etc. is to keep us alive. That is why those desires are powerful. But they have to be disciplined, so that the deeper hunger of souls and heart will emerge. Jesus says in the sermon on the mount, how blessed are those who are hunger and thirst for righteousness. What does that mean. To hunger and thirst for relationship with God. If the natural desire dominates then the real hunger for righteousness will not rise up. So we fast to control, and limit, and put in their proper place, these too insistent desires. That is why the church recommends fast and abstain from certain types of foods. For example, Alcoholism, pornography and all type of addictions. That is why fasting from these strong natural desires is required in order to raise the deeper hunger and thirst for God. First of all, let’s try to observe all that the church prescribed as fast abstinence during Lent. These remind us that we are in Lent. But specially I would advocate fast from social media during Lent. You should fast from pornography for ever. But start from this Lent.
Thirdly to give Alms. This is the most important aspect because this is a concrete way to express one’s love for the other. Love is the greatest of the theological virtues, which means “to will the good of the other”. How do we do that concretely. By helping the poor. Here the poor not in a stricter way that the economically poor, but anyone who is in need. In our context I would say the greatest need of a human being is to have one’s dignity. Am I restoring the dignity of every human being. As I said in our context through the evil of caste discrimination, we dehumanise people. During this Lent can we pay special attention to this caste issue which dehumanise persons who are the likeness and image of God. Practising caste and alienating human being is insulting God, sinning against God. During this Lent can we give and restore the human dignity of each person with whom we live?
So let us spend this great and important season of the liturgical year by praying, fasting and Almsgiving. May you have a faithful season of Lent.
