04/09/00

Lent: a season for fasting and giving alms

St. Peter Chrysologus, a fifth century Italian bishop, tells us that: “Fasting is the soul of prayer; mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. If we have not all three together, we have nothing.” As we learn to pray more intensely in and for the world this Lent, we accept also the disciplines of fasting and almsgiving as necessary parts of marking this season of penance.

“Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God” (Tertullian, A Treatise on Prayer). Prayer moves God. Fasting prepares us to be moved by God during our prayer; and almsgiving or other forms of practical charity are what God moves us toward as a result of prayer and fasting.

Fasting is less observed today, it seems, than dieting. Both leave us a bit hungry, but they are as different as day and night. We fast to empty ourselves for God’s action in our lives; we diet for our own purposes. Dieting is oriented toward goals good in themselves—the satisfying of the demands of health or fashion; but bodily fasting for penance should stir up spiritual hunger. Mother Teresa once said that it is much more difficult to work in affluent countries, where an immense choice in goods of all sorts is readily available, because people there often don’t realize that they are hungry. They can attempt to satisfy spiritual hunger with material things. This is a formula for despair.

We fast, then, in order to cut through our self-delusions and redirect our many desires to the one essential desire for Christ, who himself desires nothing but our salvation and growth in holiness. We have hungry hearts, unless we have deliberately masked the truth of our situation from ourselves. Bodily fasting helps us to come to greater awareness of our own spiritual hungers, so that we can welcome eagerly a Jesus who tells us: “No one who comes to me shall ever be hungry; no one who believes in me shall thirst again” (John 6:35).

If, through our prayer and fasting, Christ fills us with his love, we will desire to be generous with others. Christ opens us to himself and, at the same time, to all his sisters and brothers. We give to help others, certainly; but the urge to help others is given to us by God through prayer and fasting.

St. Basil the Great (330-379) once wrote: “Whom am I injuring, you will ask, when I keep what is mine for myself? And what, tell me, is yours? And from where have you brought it with you into this life? Did you not come forth naked from your mother’s womb? And will you not return naked to the earth? How then are these things yours? If you say that this is so by chance, then you are ignorant of your Creator and give no thanks to your benefactor. If you confess that they are from God, tell us then, why was it you who received them? That bread that you hold in your hands, that belongs to the starving. That cloak locked away in your wardrobe, that belongs to the naked. Those shoes that are going to waste with you, they belong to the barefoot. That silver you keep buried away, that belongs to the needy. For, whomsoever you could have helped and did not, to so many you have been unjust.”

St. Basil’s words will make little sense to one who never fasts and prays. They seem extreme unless one shares through faith in the life of a God who creates everything and who loves each of his children and desires that they have what is necessary to live. Jesus said that he came that all might have life and have it ever more abundantly. Living habitually with God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit stirs up in our hearts the desire to give alms and other goods to all those whom God loves.

There are numerous occasions and organizations which enable us to give alms in the Archdiocese. Catholics have many personal charities and contribute as well to the normal support of the Church. We build on two thousand years of almsgiving which began, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, with St. Paul collecting money from one local Church for the poor of another. In the Church, many are generous to Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services and other groups which directly help the poor. The very important Annual Catholic Appeal, which is being conducted now, makes possible many of the Archdiocesan ministries which support both our parishes and the poor, here and around the world. I am most grateful to all those who give alms in this way, because their generosity is a gauge of the strength of their faith.

May our observance of Lent in prayer, fasting and almsgiving strengthen our faith and deepen our generosity. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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