Words of Light and Hope from Jane McLarty LLM

Words of Light and Hope from Jane McLarty LLM

Lent is the season when traditionally we give something up – meat, or chocolate, or alcohol for instance. Here are two
views on fasting, the first asking us to consider what God might actually be calling us to give up:

Even today many people seem to think that true religion is defined by ‘giving up things’. In a sense it is far easier to deny
one’s body than quietly and soberly to surrender your whole self for God’s possessing. In Lent, how much easier to give up
wine or chocolate than seriously to tackle our impatience. A friend of mine who was prepared to fast most rigorously in Lent
was horrified when I suggested daily mass and half an hour’s prayer instead. That she shrank from, compared to the athletic
glory of a penitential fast. It is not always what we do, but why we do it. And our motive must always come from fixing our
eyes solely on Jesus.                                                                                        (Sister Wendy Beckett, Sister Wendy on Prayer, 2006)

And another view on fasting from Brother Ramon: For me, not only is [fasting] a token of repentance and participation with the fasting, sorrowing Jesus, but it unites me with the prophetic and apostolic tradition, with the ascetic athletes of the desert, and gives me a sense of solidarity with the suffering Church and world in these days of violence, hunger, persecution and deprivation.                                                                                                 (Brother Ramon, Forty Days and Forty Nights 1993)