The main point in the first reading for Mass today is that fasting alone isn’t enough, without showing love to your neighbor:
“Look, you do business on your fast-days, you oppress all your workmen; look, you quarrel and squabble when you fast and strike the poor man with your fist. Fasting like yours today will never make your voice heard on high. Is that the sort of fast that pleases me, a truly penitential day for men? Hanging your head like a reed, lying down on sackcloth and ashes? Is that what you call fasting, a day acceptable to the Lord?”
Jesus’s words in today’s gospel also indicate that the general rules on fasting is not the main point. Love is.
“John’s disciples came to Jesus and said, ‘Why is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?’ Jesus replied, ‘Surely the bridegroom’s attendants would never think of mourning as long as the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
Maybe our main focus on Fridays this Lent shouldn’t be so much on what’s for dinner, but on how we treat other people. What opportunities to love others have we been neglecting?
The prophet Isaiah gives us some very good guidelines to begin this journey:
“… break unjust fetters and undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked and not turn from your own kin.”
These verses really hit home for me because of the homeless crisis where I live on the west coast of the US. We relocated to Oregon from the Midwest and have never encountered such a vast population of homeless people before. California, Oregon and Washington are grappling with a very large population of homeless people, including working families with small children (and even babies), living on the streets.
Many folks in the community try to help the homeless as best they can with the limited resources they have. They fulfill this part of today’s scriptures:
“to share your bread with the hungry, and shelter the homeless poor, to clothe the man you see to be naked”
But, this is the part in today’s scriptures that bothers me the most:
” … and not turn from your own kin.”
Our daughter has a lot of homeless friends. She has been helping homeless young people in our community for many years. She brings home cooked meals and warm clothes to the young people she knows who are living under the bridges. She tells me some of their stories. Of course many struggle with mental illness or addictions, and some have lost their job, or didn’t have the skills to manage their money very well. But, many of the young people on the streets have also lost contact with their families. That bond of love in the family is broken. They became the black sheep of the family, and the lost sheep in our communities.
Maybe something to consider this Lent would be to reach out to the homeless in our own communities. Or visit our family members or friends who are incarcerated, or live in nursing homes. Maybe reach out to members of our own family that are living in poverty, struggling with addictions or mental illness, or they are estranged from the rest of the family.
If we feel a twinge of hunger on Fridays when we fast, maybe that could be a little reminder to think of those who need our love the most, and then do something concrete about it. Maybe make that phone call we’ve been putting off, and add a little more love to our Lenten journey!
