The shot backfired
Matthew (6:1-18) is the Gospel that we Catholics read every year on Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. Saint Matthew, the most Jewish of the evangelists, places in the same text three practices very dear to Jewish piety: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. The Church reads this text at the beginning of Lent in order to exhort the faithful to do these works of penance during the forty days of Lent.
The text, as Matthew wrote it, does not propose to encourage the practice of these works that the Jews supposedly already practiced ritually or formally, but rather to practice them with a right intention, because the Jews did what was good for the wrong reasons. The end does not justify the means; the Jews practiced these works in public, and perhaps not at all in private, to show themselves off to others. These works were not an end in themselves since the Jews did not practice them out of devotion because they liked to practice them, but to acquire prestige and popularity through them.
If the purpose is to exhort the faithful to do these three works during Lent, as it seems to me to be the Church's intention, and precisely because this is not the original purpose of the text, I think it backfired on the Church. This exhortation is counterproductive. And to further spoil the Lenten penance program, the Church brings into the liturgy during this time many of the prophetic texts against ritual fasting.
"Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?" (Isaiah 58:6). Here is a text that somehow takes fasting out of context, and unlike the Church, it gives an interpretation that does not even speak of food deprivation.
What the Church achieved with all this was to extinguish the practice of fasting by reducing it to two days a year, when traditionally it was two days a week. This healthy practice from every point of view, abandoned by the Church that gives in to the sin of gluttony in a consumerist society, is now valued by dietitians, doctors, Protestants, vegetarians and people of the New Age.
If the Church wanted to purify or redirect fasting in reducing it to two days a year, what it really did was to ritualize it even more. Two days, in fact, only make sense from a ritual point of view, because to bring out the desired effect as I will describe later, fasting should be practiced much more regularly.
Furthermore, the drastic reduction of fasting days can also lead to a drastic reduction in the practice of the other two works of penance: prayer and almsgiving. I don't even know why these are considered works of penance. Fasting is the only work of penance, prayer and the practice of charity should be works of love, that is, we should practice them with love and for love. Because we love God, we pray, we communicate with Him. Because we love our neighbour, we're charitable towards him. Why do we call works of penance acts of love?
This seems to convey a message that they should not be practiced, suggested by other later gospels where prophets speak against fasting.
The reward
When every religion has a Heaven as reward for the good deeds and hell as punishment for the evil deeds, somehow the Gospel ends up looking strange because it is combative in regards to the binomial of reward/punishment. We should be good for the sake of being good, out of conviction and not to obtain Heaven, just as we should avoid evil because we do not want it and not for the fear of hell.
There was a saint who intended to put out the fire of hell with water, and burn the eternal joys of Heaven with fire. But if this were to happen, the righteous and the wicked would have the same end. There is a reward for everything we do that is good and a punishment for everything we do that is bad. As the Portuguese proverb says "evil stays with those who practice it" or the English saying "what goes around comes around" (equivalent to our "here they do, here they pay"), the prize is inherent in the deed, it is intrinsic to every good work just as punishment is intrinsic to every bad one.
Nothing is innocuous, neutral or inconsequential, there is no cause without an effect, no effect without a cause. Therefore, every work done has an effect, it has a return, a consequence. If the work is good, the consequence is good, if it is bad, the consequence is bad. Every work is like an email with an attachment; the attachment is glued to the email and follows the email to wherever it is intended.
From studying the nonviolent communication, we learn that everything that we do to get a reward, what we do out of duty, or what we fail to do to avoid punishment is violent to our psyche. In life, we should do only what we like to do, do nothing out of obligation, nothing out of duty, nothing to receive a reward. Punishment should also not be a reason not to do something; we are no longer children who need policing to force us to do what is good and avoid what is evil.
Paraphrasing Hippocrates who said, "May your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food", I say "May your work be your hobby, and your hobby be your work”. If you do a job for which you're not devoted to, you're no better than a slave.
When you do a job that you naturally lean towards, you are then an artist, not a worker, and because you are in this work with your heart and soul, you are creative, you are not doing it out of obligation, but out of pleasure, and those who run for pleasure, do not tire. Love is a better motivation than money because love leads you to do things that money would never do, such as giving your life for your friends, like Jesus did.
To give up your life for love is possible and many have done it, whereas to give up your life for money, nobody has ever done it, because it is impossible. You may argue that somebody with a high life insurance may give up his life so that a loved one receives the money; he is not giving up his life for a money that he can receive but for a money that he can give, so even that is an act of love. No person who acts out of love thinks of a reward, because the moment he thinks of a reward, he is no longer acting out of love.
ALMSGIVING
‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ Matthew 6:2-4
When the left hand knows what the right hand does
Giving alms to a poor person in front of the general public is not a perfect act; the person who does so somehow uses the poor to obtain prestige, and therefore that alms is no longer really alms. The poor person has already paid for it with his service: by being a means to give prestige to the seeker of self-praise.
"Whoever gives to the poor lends to God" - The rich person who calls the TV and newspapers reporters to be witnesses of his gift to the poor, has already received in prestige and popularity his reward on earth, God no longer needs to pay him because he no longer owes him anything. The positive aspect of his act - providing assistance to someone in need - is nullified by its negative aspect, of using the needy and their indigence as a springboard to obtain good name, prestige and fame.
His act, which in the beginning was good, was staged, made to be seen under the limelight, ceased to be absolute or unequivocal. It's neither good nor bad, or it is as good as it is bad. However, the poor ate, benefited from it. If we force the rich to give according to the Gospel, the left hand not knowing what the right hand does, perhaps they may never give and so the poor will not eat. The poor care little that the rich use them to make themselves great, what they want is to eat on that day.
As we enter a church in this country, we see right at the entrance on the golden leaves of a tree, the names of the people who donated to the building of the church; when we look at the stained glass windows, we see in the background the name of the family or individual who donated this particular stained glass window.... It is assumed that these people were church going people, Christian people who knew the Gospel well.... And yet they made sure that their names can always be seen whenever someone look at the precious stained glass window that they donated to the church. When the church is old, and they have all died, will they or will they not receive their reward in Heaven?
Giving as a return
When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. The acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit. Saint Basil (329-379 AD)
Already in his time, St. Basil understood that poverty is the fruit of injustice, covetousness, and the greed of the ambitious. He knew the mechanisms that made the people of his time rich: forgery of property documents which enabled the greedy to expand their estate, invading one property after another; the avarice which prevented the fortunate ones from sharing, from being magnanimous: agricultural production would always end up in the hands of profiteers, who would retain it to sell it later on the black market for much higher price or exchange it for the children of the poor to make them slaves.
The earth belongs to all who inhabit it, property is always for common use; because of our inherent human dignity and by the simple fact that we exist, everyone has the inalienable right to have enough to survive. A system that makes some have too much and others not enough cannot be fair. Some mechanism has been used to make this happen and this mechanism is nothing more than stealing.
In 2015, Oxfam said that 99% of humanity owned less than 1% of humanity, it sounds like a fiction, but it is the great truth: the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. There is no wealth that does not cause poverty, so the more wealth grows, the more poverty increases.
In this state of affairs, the alms we give is not really a gift, but a giving back: we return to the poor what we have previously taken from them. The system that made us rich, has made someone poor, so what we have to spare has been stolen from those who are without, it is not ours. No one but few like St. Basil articulated this idea as we mentioned above, but it seems that the world has changed little in 2000 years.
Types of alms
Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. Matthew 25:34-36
As man does not live by bread alone, giving bread to someone who is hungry is not the only thing we can do for our neighbour. There are many and varied works of charity. Matthew 25 makes a list of some very concrete and varied ones to tell us that, on the one hand, the list can go on, and on the other, the acts do not have to be great, as small things repeated can become great things.
The important thing is to always have an answer on the tip of our tongue when God in the voice of our conscience asks us, “Where is your brother?” (Genesis 4, 9) We cannot answer that we are not our brother's keeper because we are in fact our brother’s keeper, at all times we must know how our brother is doing. Many of our brothers are ashamed to come up to us and reveal their needs, so we must be attentive and go to them, and ask if they are okay.
It's good to give when asked, but it's better to give unasked, through understanding...
Kalil Gibran, The Prophet
We must develop the capacity of observation to read our brother's situation and, like a good psychotherapist, ask exploratory questions that demonstrate our interest in helping without satisfying our curiosity. Incredible as it may seem, open-ended questions such as "how are you?" are useless, because the answer will be obvious: no matter how bad the person feels, he will say he is fine.
More useful questions are those that we try to guess what is going on, according to our reading of the situation and the body language: "Do you have a headache? Do you miss your parents?" We try to find out from our hunches and therefore the person, when correcting us, ends up saying what's going on.
Very often our neighbor does not need anything except our presence, a shoulder to cry on or to vent. There is a whole lot of loneliness in our modern world, which explains the success of social network where people meet without taking many risks. The main value is in fact being with people, being empathetic, and ‘wasting’ time with them. All of this falls into the category of almsgiving, because it leads us to go outside of ourselves, to go to the other.
Equality and love of our neighbour
The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these. Mark 12:31
Since almsgiving is wealth or material goods that pass from the hands of those who have much into the hands of those who have little, this act of charity makes it real one of the basic values of the human being as part of a family, a community, a clan, a tribe, a nation, a continent, a planet. The French Revolution summarized the three basic values without which there is no human life from an individual and social point of view.
Freedom - The human being is always unique, indivisible, free, valid in himself and by himself, with a dignity inherent in the fact that he is a human being and not because of social position, class or family pedigree. The value that safeguards this is freedom.
Equality - It takes two to make one. A human being results from the union of two human beings and in growing, from the physical point of view, he is a union of trillions of living beings or cells united by the same bond of a unique and unrepeatable genetic code in the history of the planet, the galaxy and the universe. From the psyche point of view, his personality is formed in the interactions with other individuals, parents, siblings, teachers, friends... Spiritually, he is part of a people that has God as its creator.
Fraternity – From the civil point of view, it is worth remembering that without fraternity the other two values cannot exist. But from the religious point of view, the values of the French Revolution are already contained in Jesus' synthesis of the Old Testament: the double commandment, to love God above all things and to love others as oneself.
"Love is either born between equals or makes people equal" – This proverb in fact illustrates this point, since what we do for love is more effective, coherent, consistent and lasting than what we do out of obligation. Therefore, as the proverb suggests, when love is born between two people of different social strata and unequal wealth, the principle of communicating vessels in physics is verified. When we put two vessels with different amounts of water in communication, the two vessels will reach the same level; that is, the water passes from the vessel that has more to the vessel that has less, reaching the same level in the two vessels.
The love between unequal people, the love that levels inequality, was immortalized in the archetype of the love of the Prince Charming for Cinderella. In falling in love with Cinderella, the Prince made her rise in social status.
Another archetype is the kiss, a symbol of love, which the princess gives to the frog and restores its lost princely dignity. Love turns frogs into princes and Cinderellas into princesses, because there is a prince in every man and a princess in every woman. Thus, we can conclude that equality and love of our neighbour are one and the same thing.
There is more joy in giving than in receiving
In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Acts 20:35
Saint Paul demonstrates the psychological and effective maturity gained throughout his life when in his farewell speech to the Christians of Miletus, he tells them that there is more joy in giving than in receiving. As we have already stated in mentioning the theory of nonviolent communication, which we have extensively written in 2018, we should not do anything that costs us, or out of duty or obligation. Whoever runs for pleasure does not get tired, and whoever gets tired does not run for pleasure. To exert violence on our psyche is always counterproductive.
"Bread with love is worth more than chicken with pain" says the people wisely. When you have a guest, if it cost you to give chicken, don't give chicken give only bread, but out of love. Easily, through body language, your guest will realize that it's costing you to give what you're giving, and in this way, it's going to backfire on you.
Children get more joy in receiving than in giving. But it is understood that they are just children, they are in training, and filling themselves up until the day when, after being satisfied, they also start giving. The same happens with love: loving and being loved is the first psychological or spiritual need. For children, the most important thing is to be loved, because it is when they are loved unconditionally that they learn to love in return.
For an adult, however, the most important need is no longer to be loved, but to love; at times an adult may well go without being loved, but he cannot go without loving. To be loved does not depend on you but on others, you cannot beg for it because others can only give it freely; if it is not given freely, it is not love.
Jesus of Nazareth, as the model of humanity, is also in this sense an example for us. Jesus was doing well without being loved, he was not depressed; he was hated by the leaders of the people, abandoned and betrayed by his friends, and he did not despair even when he felt the abandonment of the greatest love of his life, that of his Father.
He who went around the world doing good, did well without the love they gave him, although he never refused it, but he did not do well without loving and every day his love translated into works of charity for all those in need who crossed his path.
PRAYER
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:5-6
Praying at the street corners
It is said that a Muslim was running after his enemy with the dagger raised ready to kill him when he heard from the top of his mosque’s minaret the call to prayer. Immediately he stopped, spread out his mat on the ground and started praying fervently. When he was finished, he rolled up the mat, grabbed his dagger, and resumed pursuing his enemy with the dagger ready at hand.
The story is undoubtedly a caricature of a spiritual practice of formal and ritual character that does not influence the practical life of every day, a life that seems to have nothing to do with the spiritual life. It's like the two parallel lines of a railroad. This is not only a problem of Muslims or Jews, but also of Christians.
The expression "practicing Catholic" does not refer to the practice of religion and its precepts in life, but rather to the practice of the sacraments, liturgical rituals, especially the participation in Sunday Mass and confession once a year, fasting and abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and communion during the Easter season.
Religion is not practiced in the Church, but in life. Private, public and liturgical prayer, as well as participation in the sacraments and reading of the Word of God are the means not the ends in themselves; they are the means to improve our lives as they help us to read our lives in the light of the Word and to adjust our lives accordingly.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The practice of the sacraments, the reading of the Word and prayer help us to incarnate the Word into our life; they help us to configure our life to Christ, to put on Christ, as St. Paul says. They help us to incarnate the Word into our day-to-day behavior, to the point of allowing us to say one day, like St. Paul did, "It is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me". A Christian is nothing but another Christ in the here and now of human history.
It is common to see Muslims praying in public. In Israel, I used to see Jews praying on street corners and also at the airport. Who am I to judge if they do it to be seen? But even if that is the case, seeing them praying is also a publicity for prayer, not only for themselves. In other words, their praying in public space is also an exhortation for me to pray. It is a public testimony to the value of prayer.
It may also have the value of martyrdom, as they incur the risk of being ridiculed and harassed by militant atheists and agnostics who are committed to reduce religion to the private arena. It has the same value as the Portuguese processions in modern cities like this one of Toronto: praying in public is a testimony of faith and the value of prayer.
Types of prayer
When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:7-8
"Deus interior intimo meo" - God is closer to me than I am to myself, St. Augustine said. To get to myself, I pass through God, for this reason I'm never as aware of myself as when I am in prayer. Prayer is certainly an exercise of love for God, but it is also an exercise of self-awareness.
This self-awareness, which is the result of many millions of years of human evolution, is the distinctive mark of human life in relation to animal life. This self-awareness still fails us today, despite the millions of years of evolution. That is why we still act at times without it, we are not aware of what we say and what we do, we have a more reactive primal behavior and therefore more like an animal than a human.
This self-awareness, which psychotherapists urge us to achieve as the necessary condition for the whole process of change or conversion in our behavior, is the same as what we achieve through prayer and meditation.
“Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41 – The attitude of prayer keeps us awake and attentive. When we let our guards down, when we fall asleep, when we become inattentive, other forces take over us other than the reason and interest of the spirit.
But when he came to himself, he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!” Luke 15: 17 – The prodigal son did many harmful things while he was not himself. By divorcing from himself, he divorced from God and vice versa; when he returned to himself, he returned to his Father.
This proves that St. Augustine was right in saying that "God is closer to me than I am to myself." A divorce from myself is a divorce from God, and a divorce from God is a divorce from myself. Prayer therefore has two merits: keeping us on the path we have traced out, and keeping us with God. As the people say, "He who does not remember God, all good is lacking".
Thanksgiving
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits. Psalm 103:2
Raised as I was in a profoundly Catholic country like Portugal, and living many years in traditionally Protestant countries, I see two ways of living out Christianity. The flaw of the Catholics is that they are too much of a beggar and they forget the blessings they receive from God: "Count the blessings you have received" is an expression that has no equivalent in Portugal, Italy or Spain, the Catholic countries I know best.
The Protestant's favorite prayer is that of thanksgiving. They always pray before and after their meals and even have a Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday. In the Catholic Church, those who give the most thanks to God are the charismatic, a Pentecostal movement that was born outside of the Catholic Church, but was eventually adopted by her.
If all my prayers are focused on asking, I will never be able to sing and chant my magnificat like the Most Blessed Virgin and realize the wonders the Lord has done for me. Whoever gives thanks to God is more positive, more jovial, more optimistic. The Catholic beggar does not know what he has, so he doesn't give thanks and only looks at what he lacks. He's too aware of his poverty.
Our days should begin with us realizing all the blessings received, of how God acts in our lives, beginning with the gift of life, health, and all the talents received. It is certain that we are also indigent, but this should never be our first thought.
Petition
I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5
(...) your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:8
If we take a child by the hand to a supermarket and if this child does not ask us for anything, he's certainly not your typical child. To enter the kingdom of Heaven, we need to have the awareness of simplicity, humility, and indigence that a child has. We can do nothing without God's help; if we go too long without asking God for something, we commit the sin of pride and self-reliance.
We must always ask and with the same insistence with which a child does, and also have the radical faith that he has in his parents who although in not giving him everything he asks for, have never left him lacking in things he truly needs. Children never tire of asking and they ask for everything they see, but they leave it to their parents’ discretion to give them only what suits them and what they lack.
A Protestant friend said to me that if God knows what we need, as the Gospel says, why then must we keep asking? We must ask because it is in asking that we manifest our indigence, that we demonstrate our awareness of what we lack; it is by asking insistently that we show God and ourselves how much we need and desire something.
Contemplation
The holy Cure d’Ars noticed that, at noontime every day, a man from the village came to the Church and sat in the presence of the tabernacle, standing still, unmoving, without speaking a word. Intrigued, the holy Cure d'Ars asked him one day what he was doing there: "I look at Him and He looks at me", replied the peasant. St. Cure d'Ars
The peasant was neither a monk nor a hermit, nor did he have a training in Buddhism or transcendental meditation like Zen or yoga, but he had grasped the core of what is contemplative prayer. It is a prayer where words are left behind because they cannot express feelings, where feelings are also overcome and only the presence remains.
To contemplate is to do already here on earth what we will one day do in heaven for all eternity. To keep the mind on God is to empty the mind, the soul and the heart of all thought, of all desire and simply to be with the One who is the author of our life, the reason of our being. The creature empties himself, empties his mind and his heart, to fill himself with God, disconnecting more and more from the world, until he reaches the beatific vision of his Creator.
As the peasant suggests, it is not necessary to take a course to reach contemplation. Only those who play the piano often, learn to play it: in the same way, only those who contemplate often, achieve it, because we only have to be persistent in contemplation and contemplation itself will instruct us on how to contemplate.
Freedom and love for God
“Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Mark 12:29-30
A slave is a human being deprived of his dignity to be human; it is hard for us to understand this mentality in these times, but there were times and not so long ago, when there were human beings who were looked upon as if they were animals, without rights, subjects of a lord who had absolute power over them, and who could even kill them without breaking the law because they were his property, and he could do with them whatever he wanted.
Freedom is "condictio sine qua non" for human life. It's hard to understand how certain regimes like the Communist China have been in place for so long. It is true that they buy the people with bread, with wealth, but freedom is the bread of the spirit; without it, the spirit is not fed and does not expand.
When we speak of freedom, the external shackles come into our minds, such as the bonds that chained the slaves in the ancient world and closer to us, those that imprisoned the slaves on cotton plantations in southern United States, the Jewish slaves in Egypt or even the Marxist interpretation of the capitalist world of the Industrial Revolution in which workers led a life similar to the one of slaves for working too many hours a day.
Little is said about inner slavery, now that in most democratic countries there are no longer slavery caused by external elements. But there is another type of slavery: slaves to power, fame, wealth, money, maintaining a young image, the terror of old age, slaves to bad habits, slaves to substances, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, unnecessary medications.
There are many things that can enslave us. That is why it makes a whole lot of sense the commandment to love God above all things and above all people. I do not believe in the existence of pure atheists and agnostics; I do not believe those who say that they do not pay homage and submit to any earthly reality. I do not believe that atheists and agnostics can keep their minds and hearts free from affections for things, people or realities which can easily turn into idols.
For what they profess to be possible, they would have to live without relating with anything or anyone to be able to remain pure and clean of affection for things and people. And even if this could be true, they would end up idolizing themselves. But since this is almost impossible, those who call themselves atheists or agnostics easily idolize realities, things or people in which case they are more than atheists or agnostics, they are polytheists.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me… Matthew 10:37
A father had a daughter who was the delight of his life. When she passed away, he was not able to go on with his life and ended up committing suicide. When his lifeless body was discovered, they found in his coat pocket a drawing that his little girl had dedicated to her daddy on which he had written "I want to be buried with this drawing in my pocket."
A heartbreaking true story that shows the love of perdition this father had for his daughter. As much as it may be praised from a purely human point of view, it is also to be condemned from a religious point of view. This father had idolized his daughter, that is, he loved her more than he loved God; otherwise, he wouldn't have ended his own life.
Children, parents, everyone may leave us, and they will leave us one day for sure. But God never leaves us; for this reason, we must love Him first and everyone else after, just as our Father in faith did when he was willing to hand over to God his only son when He asked him; Abraham also faced the temptation to idolize Isaac.
Prayer to God is a manifestation of our love for Him and when we love Him, we love him above all things, people and realities because, even though human love can fill us in some way, only the divine love fills us completely because He alone is enough for us.
The Lord's Prayer
Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. Matthew 6:9-13
The Lord's Prayer will be the subject of an article of its own. Jesus did not intend to teach a prayer so that we could repeat it over and over again. Let us remember that the disciples also did not ask the master to teach them a prayer, but to teach them how to pray, like John the Baptist had taught his disciples.
I like to look at this prayer as a pocket gospel, because it contains in itself everything we should know and everything we should practice in our life. On the other hand, it is for me like a shopping list. Some of us when we go shopping, we make a list of the things we need so that we don’t forget something important and have to go back when we have already paid for what we bought.
It is in this sense that I say that the Lord's Prayer is not exactly a prayer because it is composed of statements disconnected from each other, as it happens with its articles or clauses. Each statement of the Lord's Prayer has a meaning in itself and is disconnected from the next. The Lord's Prayer is therefore composed of the essential articles of all prayers.
The Lord's Prayer is a prayer scheme, the skeleton of a prayer, the method that contains all the points that we must take into account when addressing God and in order of importance, that is, what we should ask first, how and whom we should ask.
When we speak of the Lord's Prayer in another text, we will see that although it seems to be a prayer that is addressed exclusively to the Father, not explicitly naming the other two persons of the Most Holy Trinity, it is nevertheless a Trinitarian prayer, in which each person of the Holy Trinity appears in his role or in the role he plays in salvation history.
FASTING
And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:16-18
Fasting with disfigured face
Lent is a spiritual campaign for people to do something with the motive of the Passion, in the hope that later they will continue. I have a colleague who used to quit smoking the whole of Lent and then at Easter went back to smoking again. More uplifting is the example of my father who, together with the other young people of the JOC (Catholic Youth Work), pledged before the parish priest, Fr. Prata, that they would stop smoking during the whole of Lent; after Lent, on Easter Day, while my father's colleagues smoked one cigarette after another, my father never smoked again.
Ramadan for the Muslims is a social fast; in contrast, the fasting of Ethiopian Christians which is of all fasts, the most severe as it covers two days a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year except the Wednesdays and Fridays during the 50 days of Easter season. Furthermore, every day of Advent and every day of Lent is a day of fasting; to these is added one month for Our Lady.
This means that in total, the year has almost more fasting days than non-fasting days. On fasting days, one eats only once a day, and at that one time, there is no animal protein; that is, no meat, fish, eggs, milk or derivatives.
Fasting is not easy. Seeing others fasting helps us to fast: the social pressure in countries where there is fasting is very strong. Therefore, as we have said with almsgiving and praying in public, the fact that we know that the Muslims are fasting is still a silent exhortation for us to also experience the merit of fasting.
Fasting in the broad sense
If praying is our attitude towards God, it is telling Him that we love Him above all things, being also the highest manifestation of our freedom; and if giving alms is our attitude towards others, loving them as we love ourselves, this being the only guarantee of equality and social justice, then what does fasting serve?
Like prayer and almsgiving, fasting is also something more than depriving oneself of food: it refers to the attitude we have towards ourselves. We have already described the two values on which human life is based: freedom, in its individual dimension, and equality, in its social dimension.
Fasting serves like the zero serves in mathematics; it was the invention of zero that made mathematics possible. In Roman numerals where the zero does not exist, mathematics is not possible. Similarly, it is fasting that makes equality and love of neighbour possible, as well as freedom and love for God.
How can I affirm in my life the other, whether God or neighbour, if I do not deny myself? (Mark 8:34) If I do not fast from my self-centeredness and renounce aggrandizing and inflating my ego by depriving myself of having more, what kind of vassal can I give to God if I consider myself lord of myself?
How can I serve God and be free, if I serve money (Matthew 6:24), if I gave my heart to wealth, power, pleasure? If I do not own myself, how can I give myself to the Other, whether God or neighbour? How can I love my neighbor and feel what’s like to be in his shoes if instead of serving him, I use him? And how can I share what is mine, things, time and energies, if I do not renounce them first? Using a very current expression in our country in crisis, to fast is to cut spending; it is to cut back spending on myself, time, energy and resources to be able to give them, and give myself, to others.
Fasting in the strict sense, that is, food deprivation
Fasting, or dieting in medical language, is for the health of the soul like sports is for the health of the body. We do not make a life out of fasting because we are not monks, just as we are not professional athletes, we do not make a life out of sports; but the moderate practice of fasting, and the moderate practice of sports, both enhance in its own way the health of the soul as well as the health of the body.
Fasting and sports, thus understood, are at the service of life, because they train us for it, granting us many benefits. Sports trains the body and mind by giving them more energy and health; fasting, in the sense of food deprivation, or abstinence in the sense of deprivation of certain foods, trains the soul in art, and the capacity to deny oneself, of self-denial, self-control and willpower.
Since food is the most indispensable need we have after breathing, depriving ourselves of it costs us a lot; for this very reason, it is the best training to be able to fast in the broad sense, that is, to make cuts to the ‘I’ to affirm the ‘YOU’, which is what really matters.
Fasting makes the person animically stronger and prepares him for greater sacrifices and self-denial. The opposite is also true: one who has no self-control in food consumption and is a glutton, will hardly be a person who shares, and is very likely to be fickle and greedy too.
Esau lost his birthright for a plate of lentils (Genesis 25:29-34); May gluttony, a sin that no one confesses anymore in this consumerist society, not lead us to lose our body and soul. As the people say, "the glutton digs the grave with his teeth" and "avarice breaks the bag".
Conclusion: In praying we love God, in almsgiving we love others, and in fasting we love ourselves. This last is what psychotherapists call tough love, and the gospel self-denial: a “conditio sine qua non” for making space in our lives for the Other, that is, God and the other, that is our neighbor.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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