Joel 2:12-18 2^nd Corinthians 5:20 – 6:2 Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18

In the religious imagination of some older Catholics, the Season of Lent can conjure up memories of a dread-filled seriousness, along with a condemnation of any personal pleasure and an unhealthy fostering of guilt over imperfections great and small. Please, please, let us work to dispel such ideas and to assuage all such memories! The Gospel message, including Church seasons, is Good News, never bad! Indeed, these tones from a sometimes very harsh pre-Vatican II piety and the (metaphorically) torturous ideas that went with them were real and difficult in the lives of some. The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-65) ushered in an era of reform and renewal for the good of believers. By now (a half-century later!), a healthier and more joyful tone behind such reform and renewal ought to have made a very constructive and positive impact on the popular spiritual practices of all our Lenten customs. Remember that Lent (from the Latin word meaning “slowly’) is a liturgical season, i.e., it goes along with our public worship. Much of the world is oblivious to it (as much of the world was oblivious to Advent!), but thoughtful Catholics and many other mainline Christians have some awareness that the season is one of prayerful retreat, spiritual renewal, and personal reflection time in preparation to celebrate the Pashcal high holy days beginning with Palm Sunday. The week subsequent to Palm Sunday, called Holy Week, makes use of the Gospel narratives which find Jesus in Jerusalem for his final and fatal visit. He entered triumphantly and observed the Passover festival with his friends, but also (as the disciples appreciated only fully in hindsight) established his New Covenant with Good News for all! Thus will Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Great Vigil of Easter, Easter Sunday and Easter Season all remind us of the various events, insights, and Graces of the Redemption bestowed by God through Christ on the entire world. Lent asks us to annually effect a personal course correction towards the Paschal Mystery. If your memories of Lenten seasons past are memories of misery and unhappiness, please understand that deliberately embraced miseries and unhappiness are not virtuous. Nor does the God of love whimsically inflict misery of any kind onto people. Give yourself permission to let go those old, childish, and even destructive attitudes and practices, and to change your mind (Greek: metanoia, i.e., repent) and embrace the profound Good New of the Risen Christ! The Cross which Christ’s disciples must carry is necessarily accepted in order to bring about redemptive change, i.e., change for good and loving purpose.

Joel, one of the “Minor Prophets” (i.e., one who’s written message fills a relatively short scroll), probably ministered between 400 BC and 350 BC. He was very active in and around the Jerusalem temple, the focus of Jewish public prayer life. He preached in a tone of voice encouraging, even demanding, both personal and collective thoughtful reflection and repentance. Today’s first reading was Joel’s enthusiastic exhortation to repentance and renewal which he thought was well past due. From his cultural perspective, an important and socially accepted sign of genuine repentance was the ascetical practice of fasting (deliberately diminishing one’s food intake as a sign of healthy self-control) accompanied by a visible and generous simplification of one’s life-style (through alms giving and prayer).

The Gospel passage from Matthew elaborates on those ascetic practices of fasting, praying and almsgiving. It promotes them as signs of a healthy spiritual life when they come from the very depths of the person. Fasting in the Jewish and Christian spiritual traditions has never been about dieting, whether for good physical health or selfish vanity. It is a spiritual and physical engagement one has with oneself. It is a matter of constructive self-control and self-discipline in the form of religious mortification. Paul considered self-control or self-discipline to be one of the seven classic “fruits of the Holy Spirit” (see Galatians 5:21-22). Nor was fasting done to subvert one’s physical abilities, but rather to sharpen one’s introspective abilities. A full stomach induces lethargy. Fasting requires your self-disciplined attention when your stomach demands “Feed me!” You must conscientiously choose whether to be master of or slave to your appetite. The degree to which you are able and willing to invoke self-control determines which you are, master or slave. Prayer, too, is an important sign of reflective faith. This particular prayer is not the prayer of desperation (indeed a legitimate and important prayer style!), but rather the willingness to deliberately engage in regular, conscientious, and on-going conversation with God as part of intimate friendship-building. Ostentatious prayer is ridiculed by Jesus, while praying in the privacy and secrecy of a trust-filled relationship with God is held in high regard. Almsgiving is gratitude-based generosity combined with genuine compassion for those in need, and a joyful desire to share one’s blessings. Charitable giving out of obligation or embarrassment or even to gain a tax deduction can do good, but such motivating pressures diminish the virtue of sincere compassion. Alms giving is much more profound when one gives as God has already given: freely, lovingly, joyfully. Giving from one’s substance rather than merely giving a convenient portion of one’s excess is Gospel generosity founded in Christ’s suffering and death on the Cross. (If YOU were in serious need, which would YOU prefer: a minimal token gift or a profoundly sacrificial assist??) And private, confidential, and even anonymous giving is very, very noble. Not to sound ungrateful or excessively idealistic, but the practice of publically naming and memorializing donors in churches, schools, and other institutions sounds like attention-getting devices for the emotionally needy. Of them Jesus might say, “Even the pagans do as much.” The most legitimate Gospel motives for giving are profound gratitude to God, a genuine concern for neighbors in need, and a desire to do good simply because the good needs to be done.

Before meeting the Risen Christ, Paul had been an excessively zealous religious leader, one which we would likely today label a terrorist and extremist. We would consider him the very antithesis of the virtuous believer. After his Gospel conversion, he developed (and thereafter maintained) a super-sensitive awareness of how radical a change the Grace of God had brought about in him. He was changed in heart and mind, and in every aspect of his life, because he experienced a person call by the Risen Christ to engage the Gospel of Wisdom, Justice, and Love. Even though he had formerly been absolutely certain that he was already doing God’s work, he later came to appreciate how his personal and obsessive zeal actually twisted, obscured and contradicted God’s goodness. He came to realize that for the rest of his life his personal mission was to foster an on-going reconciliation and renewal between himself and the people of the Gospel as a public witness to the God of love and mercy. His way of demonstrating that God’s Grace was truly active and effective was to personally work to reconcile and heal his own relationships by how he preached the Gospel. He knew it was he who had to change, not God. He considered himself and all the baptized to be ambassadors of Christ. How he presented himself to others as Christ’s ambassador was at least in part how Christ himself might be perceived by those others. Thus, does each Christian’s face becomes the face of Christ; each Christian’s joyful generosity becomes the joyful generosity of Christ; each Christian’s forgiveness and mercy becomes the very forgiveness and mercy of Christ.

In Lent, we are exhorted and encouraged to repent, reconcile, fast, pray, give alms, and retreat, and even rejoice. This is a season which must not cause anguish, but rather peace and balance. Self-inflicted misery is not healthy; it is often quite unhealthy, destructive and sometimes even silly. Lent is a season which promotes good spiritual and emotional health, adult and thoughtful reflection, and active personal change. Such promotion must be done in concert with a healthy and balanced Gospel message. It is preparatory for our annual experience of the Paschal high holy days.

Choose only those Lenten practices which produce genuine peace in you! For the mature and insightful, let’s say enough with giving up candy or movies. Rather, look for an activity which requires you to re-budget your time and efforts at making your neighborhood and the world a better place by actively engaging the Gospel life-style. Volunteer regularly at some charity. Budget to give regular support to some effective cause. Schedule personal and liturgical prayer in your life more significantly. And, may your Lenten Season be holy and peace-filled!