FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 2024
Molly Fernandes
Stay blessed, stay safe! Take care, continue to maintain social distance, wear mask, sanitize… are the messages that still continue to make rounds on social media, phone calls and the like; and all these summed up together can be tagged as physical wellbeing!!! Certainly and obviously! Down the memory lane it’s almost the 1st anniversary of the deadly disease that shattered the leisure and well-planned summer vacation, exotic tours, lavish weddings and the great Paschal Mystery within the confines of the home and the Church.
This year it’s the second Lenten season in the pandemic but with much more relaxations than the quarantine within the quarantine! It brings to mind the sops that counsel us to take care of the physical health while the Lenten period urges us to cater to the spiritual health. Last season we had ample of quotes from the Bible that reminded us about the uproar of Covid-19 pandemic, the social media was full of relevant Bible verses or quotations, like Isaiah 26: 20 Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. Then the about the lockdown in Egypt… when the Angel of death passed by the Israelites they were protected, those whose door post had the blood of the lamb; the flood lasted 40 days, the Exodus…, 40 days of fasting and that 40 represent change.
In fact the spiritual health, reminds and challenges us, saying, the things of the world are not bad, they are good, precisely because God created them, so that we might take delight in them and have our needs fulfilled and not satisfy our greed!. The Lenten observance is in a way to retrain our souls and our bodies, our thoughts, and our senses. By small hardships strive to recover the integrity that God intended for us and regain our lost graces. And this is well done by prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
Lenten observance is a time to introspect and look into those issues that pose problems when we begin to prefer the creatures to their Creator. Whether we prefer to eat and drink to excess than honour God; amass wealth than turn to the Lord in prayer. Whether we rather entertain our eyes with sensual images than conform to the commandments or the days Word of God that indeed invites us to tear our hearts; control our senses and fast on the wicked ways of the flesh, that indulge to do harm than hearken to “do not neglect to do good and share what you have with others because God is pleased with sacrifices of that kind” Heb 13: 16.
During the Lenten observance one prefers to fast on food, give almsgiving and recite some prayers. But this is not the fast the Lord is asking of us! As a thought comes to mind “what is the food you wish to give up this Lenten observance?”…a question queried. And well deserved answer that was running in my mind was uttered by someone else: “don’t think of fasting or giving up food rather fast on - which St. Paul speaks in Gal. 5: 19ff: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, reveling, etc.
We have valid choices to fast. But we need not forget the reason why we’re fasting. Not to maintain physical health! It’s in order to make our lives more like the life of Jesus, who fasted in the desert and who freely accepted suffering for our sake.
