Dear Saints,
I’ve spent a lot of time exploring the traditional penitential practices these past few years, both in Advent and in Lent. There is so much depth to the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that I can continue these reflections with you all the way up to Jesus’ Second Coming! This week I want to take another look at fasting.
Meditating on the last words of Christ from the Cross in his Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard John Neuhaus once wrote:
For paradise we long. For perfection we were made... This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives... This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for... nothing less than perfect communion with the... one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together... we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled... The only death to fear is the death of settling for something less.
What a beautiful reflection for Advent, a season of waiting, of longing, and of yearning. This is a season of holy dissatisfaction! Neuhaus is exactly right. We were made for more. We were made for life with God and life in his kingdom. We will not be satisfied with anything less.
The problem is that we often settle for second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) best. We try to fill ourselves up on the things of the world, and lose track of the fact that only God can meet our needs. No amount of money, power, pleasure, or popularity will quench our thirst for the eternal.
This is why we FAST! We fast from settling for second best. We fast from whatever holds out to us the promise of satisfaction and the idea that we were made to satisfy ourselves. And so we allow our holy dissatisfaction to drive us to God, to drive us to PRAY! And ALMSGIVING? If God alone is our satisfaction, then we won’t hold too tightly to anything else: we will give what we have (time, talent, treasure) away.
Christ’s Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ