LENT 101: PRAYER, FASTING AND ALMSGIVING

God is perfectly clear about the kind of fasting we’re asked to undertake. In fact, God has been clear for thousands of years—and God reminds us each and every Ash Wednesday with distinct clarity through the words of Isaiah:

Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed, breaking off every yoke? Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry, bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house; Clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own flesh?

—Isaiah 58: 6-7

Just so. The call to charity and justice is unavoidable. It is, it would seem, God’s deepest desire for our own individual fasts. Swearing off social media may free me to help another. Buying one fewer cups of coffee a day can be a fruitful exercise if it means that the money saved goes instead to a worthy cause. Honing my own self-discipline is important and valuable, as long as it better enables me to fulfill what Jesus taught us: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

If we keep this in mind, then our Lenten practice of prayer, fasting and almsgiving necessarily becomes about encounter. Our prayer keeps us mindful of God at work in the world—in our lives and the lives of others—and poises us to act in line with the working of the Spirit. Our fasting becomes an exercise in self-emptying, of preventing the “me-ness” from preoccupying our minds. It allows God to work within us, and helps us focus our attention on others. And our almsgiving becomes the necessary response, the filling up and cascading over of love for neighbor, a desire to, in our self-emptied state, give of ourselves to those most in need.

Is this not the path that Jesus walked, that same path that we prayerfully consider throughout the season of Lent?