But our good intentions alone
are not enough to obtain this salvation. The first to make it happen is God, who
comes to our aid. Of us is asked only that we have an attitude of trust and
abandonment, that we surrender to his love, that we offer ourselves to his embrace by
listening to his Word and by working out our conversion through the Lenten practices of fasting, alms, and prayer.
The first of the three, fasting, regards our
relationship with ourselves. It has two dimensions: one, exterior, goes beyond
abstaining from food to include avoiding the excessive use of certain means of
communication (television, cell phones, internet…) and certain forms of
entertainment, ect… A second, interior dimension is that in which our fasting
becomes a “sign” of our living out the Word of God, a “sign” of our desire for
purification, a “sign” of our abstaining from sin.
Secondly, the giving of
alms, closely tied to fasting, regards our relationship with others in as much
as we share with our brothers that which we have. Finally, there is prayer,
essentially relationship with God, an intimate and trusting dialogue that is
born out of meditating on the Word, especially in community.
These activities can only be
carried out on one condition: that we pass beyond the surface to the heart of
the actions. Otherwise we will experience Lent as merely an exterior practice of a few
extra religious signs, and not as a path of sincere conversion and profound
renewal. If we lack the interior dimension, fasting becomes ostentatious
hypocrisy, alms become vaunting oneself, and prayer becomes a drunkenness of empty
words.
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