As we enter upon our first friday of Lent, the church invites us to abstain from eating meat. All who have reached the age of 14 up are obliged to abstain from eating meat on Friday's during lent.
Hence, most people will gorge themselves on hefty fish baskets, thinking they are fulfilling the obligation. The fast and abstinence is meant to make us hungry for something beyond, something more; it does not mean we should substitute fish in the place of meat and carry on business as usual.
Isaiah warns us about carrying out our own pursuits. Rather fasting and abstinence is meant to liberate us from our appetites, empower us to seek the higher things and truly enter in a deep communion with God above and draw closer to Christ.
Fasting and abstinence is about turning our attention else where and shows we are sincere in what we seek.
This is not a new notion instituted by the church. Abstinence was part of God's command from the beginning. Even in Paradise, the Garden of Eden, prior to the fall, God asked Adam and Eve to abstain from the tree of knowledge of Good and evil; they were asked to abstain as a act of filial obedience, as a way of allowing God to direct their life rather than running it themselves.
Abstinence was part of their deep communion with God.
Should it not be part of ours as well.
Also, as we fast and abstain, as we offer up small sacrifice we help filter graces of conversion through the church to souls in need.
Through fasting and abstinence we invite God to remake our hearts that they may be contrite and humbled. Thus our hearts are no longer forgetful but attentive to the graces received and longing for God's mercy to fulfill his promise to recreate us anew each day.
Thus, our hearts shall be opened not only to God but to all of humanity, our brothers and sisters in need; Thus, freed from our self-centered reality, we will reach out and tend to those around us with the care and gentleness and generosity we have received from God.
We will be able to give to others what we have received from God's goodness to us. God's goodness to us becomes our goodness to others.
"This is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke, sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and homeless, clothing the naked when you see them, not turning your back on your own."
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