If your intention as a Catholic in Lent is to deepen your faith and relationship with God, that means one and only one thing: metanoia!

 

That’s the kind of transformation that happens when we repent of our sins, meditate on how they happened with our weaknesses and tendency to forget God as we turn our limited attention to something else briefly, but then FORGET that we forget God during what we tell ourselves will be only a very brief “break” and sometimes don’t get back to God for a lot longer time than we ever planned when we snuck away for a secret selfish second!

But for the grace of God, we wouldn’t be able to come back, such is the darkness of sin and the blindness that happens after to the human mind (attention) and heart (desire).

 

So, unless we’re going to be stupid and just follow some tradition that’s human, because other people are asking: “what did you give up for Lent?” what we need to do is “work backwards” strategically from the goal we seek to achieve to discover what it is that’s blocking us from achieving it.

 

That goal again is to unite our will with the Will of God by the grace of God more perfectly through repentance, prayer and fasting.

 

But what do we mean by fasting? And what are the specific things we must do to achieve the goal with the help of fasting?

 

Today’s first reading from Isaiah answers both questions.

Fasting is that tool that helps subdue the weakness of our physical and bodily urges and inclinations that take our mind’s attention and heart’s desire away from God to our self.

 

But what is it exactly that is blocking the “manifestation of light” that happens when we act on the will of God in the concrete day-to-day dynamic of our life?

 

Again, the answer is in Isaiah’s prophetic word attached, the yellow part…. you’ll need to click on the image to see the whole text.

 

Each of us must answer that question for ourselves, and we do it by checking ourselves against the list that Isaiah gives us here, which is the “key” for deciding what it is that we need to “fast from”, or give up, leave behind, or remove in order to move forward spiritually and grow more intimately united with the heart and mission of God in the world as His emissaries.

 

For example, if you happen to be a politician or a priest or a pharmacist or a doctor and you know in your heart now that the continued injection of mRNA are unnecessarily poisoning people and putting them in bondage, then the call to liberate them demands that something change your silence into words, your inaction into action, which means you need to identify and then fast from, or give up that thing blocking the light and truth from coming out in you.

 

 

Is it fear of being excluded by your associates, friends or family making known to you your need to seek the grace in prayer to overcome those attachments if they are preventing God’s Will from being done in you?

 

Is it that you fear being abandoned to loneliness, of not being accepted or liked by your peers? That may reveal a need to immerse yourself in the communion of saints in your prayer to build a community of support for the spiritual warfare within which we are all engaged.

Is it the insecurity of perhaps losing a job or income revealing a deficit in trust in God?

 

Only you can answer the question of what it is blocking greater fidelity to God for you, but when so many people are now being attacked by evil, and so few are speaking out against it, especially those who could ACTUALLY get the attention of the media and the politicians, there is obviously a lot of blocks needing removal, and consequently, a DIRE need for a lot of fasting if true imitators of our Lord and Savior Jesus are to emerge.

 

Whatever it is you need to fast from this Lent [which God will reveal to anyone sincerely wanting to know] I can get you started by assuring you that it’s not giving up pop or chocolate for a few weeks.