THE PLACE OF ABSTINENCE AND MORTIFICATION


WEDNESDAY OF FIRST WEEK OF LENT

Jonah 3:1-10; Ps 51:3-4,12-13,18-19; Lk 11:29-32

The Benefit of Bodily Discipline

We have considered prayer and almsgiving, two of the three practices the Church calls us to embrace during Lent. The selection of readings for today puts forward the third practice, abstinence or self-mortification, for our consideration. Many of the Fathers of the Church presented these three practices as different aspects or parts of the same process of our conversion to God. We consider abstinence and almsgiving as two branches of the tree of spiritual life, which has prayer as its root. Prayer is the root of spiritual life; it goes deep into the original desire God created in us, as we reflected yesterday. The innate and original desire corresponds to God, who made us as his temple. Darkness descends upon our souls and extinguishes the spiritual life when we convert the original desire for God to desire for creatures. When this happens, as is often the case, God cannot dwell in us. Charity, which is the action of the Holy Spirit in and with us, dies in the absence of God.

The sinful self takes up the vacuum created by the absence of God in us. The implication is that every action is done for the sake of self, causing the flourishing of sin and evil. The Ninevites were in this situation when God sent his word to them through the prophet Jonah. As we explained yesterday, the word of God has the power to penetrate flesh, bone, and soul, to echo in our very depth, and to awaken the original and innate desire God created in us. God sends his word to help us rediscover the original yearning within us. To accommodate this desire again in our awareness and act correspondingly is conversion to God. The Ninevites converted to God at the sound of his word. “And the people of Nineveh believed in God; they proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest to the least. The news reached the king of Nineveh, who rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth, and sat down in ashes.” The act of conversion starts with faith in the word of God, which is the gift of a new life received from the word of God. When we receive the word of God with faith, it dethrones self and all its evil alliances from the throne of God within us. The sitting in the ashes of the Ninevites and their king demonstrates this dethronement of self by the word of God that now takes pre-eminence. An alternative sacrament of this rejection of the rulership of self is the spraying of ashes on our heads. The practice of imposition of ashes on our forehead on Ash Wednesday originated from this ancient show of conversion.

The outward show or action must correspond with an inward disposition of acknowledgment and confession of our sins. King David shows us how to do this in his confessional psalm. “Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion blot out my offence. O wash me more and more from my guilt and cleanse me from my sin… A pure heart create for me, O God, put a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, nor deprive of your holy spirit.” The spiritual life and operations will not start if we fail to believe in the word of God. The Lord’s judgment of his audience in the gospel is due to their refusal to believe. “This is a wicked generation; it is asking for a sign. The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so will the Son of Man be to this generation.” The Lord here refers to the sign within each of us, which the word of God causes in us whenever we hear it proclaimed. The possibility of our refusal to listen to the word of God and follow the sign it causes within us is the reason for the holy season of Lent. The Church calls her children to go through the conversion process this season of Lent. The process involves the renewal of spiritual life and prayer through the renewal of our faith in the word of God. The mortification and discipline of our bodies we indulged by our inadvertence to the word of God, to the detriment of our spirit and neighbours, who were supposed to receive our charitable acts; Almsgiving, through which we take what we amassed for self and bodily indulgence and give them back to their owners, our neighbours. These three practices make the Lenten Season a time of spiritual renewal for the Mother Church.

Let us pray: Look kindly, Lord, we pray, on the devotion of your people, that those who by self-denial are restrained in body may by the fruit of good works be renewed in mind. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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