1st Sunday Lent - Year C

Fasting, Feasting, Offering

Fasting from food and feasting on the presence of God are the two important spiritual exercises during Lent.  In between comes offering with almsgiving.  This six-week long intense preparation for Jesus’ saving death and resurrection can be considered to be a “time-out” in every calendar year.

Sports enthusiasts know that a time-out can give athletes a chance: to regroup, if the game plan is not meeting with the success they had hoped for; to revise existing strategies, to affirm the good efforts of the team; to re-centre the attention of the team on the desired goal; to add to the psychological burden of their opponents by slowing the action of the game and interrupting their momentum.

As regards the time-out we call Lent, these six weeks similarly provide believers in Jesus with an opportunity for engaging in a variety of exercises, from rethinking their behaviour to regrouping their energies, from revising their spiritual strategies to affirming their good efforts, from slowing the pace of their daily lives to re-centering their focus on Christ and the gospel.  To put it another way, the annual Lenten time-out offers each of us a special opportunity for fasting and for feasting.  Both of these spiritual exercises are featured in the scripture selections of this Sunday.

In today’s first and second readings, we are invited to feast on the word of God describing the gift of salvation.  Paul reminds us that we are to appropriate God’s saving gifts by faith.., “believe in your heart and you will be saved… faith in the heart leads to justification” (Rom. 10:8-13).  For his part, the author of Deuteronomy reminds us that our feasting is to be firmly founded in the remembering and retelling of our saving story.  (Deut. 26:4-10).

Following the example offered by Jesus (Lk 4:1-13) fasting is to be embraced as a means to spiritual growth.  Along with praying, offering and almsgiving, fasting is to be an integral aspect of every believer’s formation.