According to Pope Francis, fasting must never become superficial. He often quotes the early Christian mystic John Chrysostom who said: “No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.” So, if we’re going to fast from anything this Lent, Pope Francis suggests that ‘even more than candy or alcohol, we fast from indifference towards others.’ We live in exceptionally turbulent times where hatred surpasses love. Do we have enough of time to love another and even know their sorrows and troubles? It’s natural for us to take each other for granted and overlook things happening around us, starting from our family, our relations/neighbourhood and others. So, let this Lenten season teach us to be a little humble and considerate of those around us.
Jesus is loving and joyful and He taught us to be meek and humble like Himself. Hence, we should do a couple of things that affect the spiritual growth and advancement of ourselves and as well of others. Let’s resolve to grow in faith, hope and charity and make the world around us a better place to live in. If we truly loved God with all our heart, mind and soul, we would be concentrating in doing good to others.
This Lenten season let’s do the ordinary things extraordinarily well. Lent is the perfect time to learn how to love again. Jesus, the great protagonist of this holy season, He certainly showed us the way. In him, God descends all the way down to bring everyone up. In His life and His ministry, no one is excluded. Doing ‘good’ to others is the main theme of Lent, now that’s something worth fasting for. We should take up practices that help us to become aware of and responsive to the needs of others.
More importantly, a fast from self-centredness and indifference toward others is important. How can we achieve this, then? Well, primarily let’s stop being insensitive. Lent is a season to make love a reality, not expecting to get anything but to give everything. Making Lent a season to be sad, carrying resentment, unhappiness and refraining from all joyful expression, is just not what Lent is about. Lent is a season to free ourselves from the shadows of our past, moving forward to meet and create a new relationship with God and one another. We don’t need to carry a funeral face to go through Lent. What we need to do is, surrounded by the love of God; to understand that life is too short to be upset. Lent is to love, to love so much that the joy we get from staying together is greater than the pain we feel.
Secondly, let us be concerned for each other and not remain isolated and indifferent to the fate of our brothers and sisters. All too often, however, our attitude is just the opposite: as of indifference and disinterest. Our hearts should never be so wrapped up in our affairs and problems that they fail to hear the cry of the poor.
