Arise — go! Sell all you possess. Give it
directly, personally to the poor. Take up My cross (their cross) and follow Me,
going to the poor, being poor, being one with them, one with Me.
Little — be always little! Be simple, poor,
childlike.
Preach the Gospel with your life — without
compromise! Listen to the Spirit. He will lead you.
Go into the marketplace and stay with Me. Pray,
fast. Pray always, fast.
Be hidden. Be a light to your neighbour’s feet.
Go without fear into the depth of men’s hearts. I shall be with you.
Pray always. I will be your rest.
The Little Mandate of Madonna
House
Pray, fast.
Pray always, fast. Last week in
our journey through these words that are the heart of MH spirituality and way
of life, I focussed on these same words, but wrote about the aspect of prayer
and its essential role in our life.
But what
about fasting? What is it, and why is it? Why is it important? Is it? How does
it fit in with going into the marketplace, being plunged into the human
situation and its bargains and trade-offs, its cold calculations and tragic
compromises? Why is fasting a right Gospel response to our being deeply
immersed in the affairs, concerns, joys and hopes, sorrows and distress of all
men and women, all of humanity?
I write
about this in my book Idol Thoughts. Fasting essentially is a matter of
establishing a spiritual order, or rather healing a deep spiritual disorder in
us, by a bodily action. It bears witness, therefore, to the essential unity of
our bodies and our spirits, that the two are not and cannot be at odds with
each other, but form a single reality, a single person. What we do in our
bodies directly affects our souls and vice versa.
The disorder
that is then expressed in the more unsavoury aspects of the marketplace—the
buying and selling not of goods and services, but of personal integrity and
dignity—is essentially the disorder of idolatry.
Human beings are inveterate idolators. That is, we look everywhere else but
to God for our happiness. Whether it is sex or food or power or revenge or riches
or fame or chemical stimuli or a host of other variations on those themes, we
slip into idolatry as soon as we complete the sentence ‘Happiness is…’ with
something other than God, something other than our living communion with the
Father in our Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Food is one
of the lesser idols, in many ways, but our habit of overeating is nonetheless a sort of
anti-sacrament of this false religion of happiness. That is, we have all sorts
of desires and hungers in us, too many to count really. But when we keep
shovelling ‘it’ in, when every little twinge of physical hunger is immediately
filled by some morsel of food (or perhaps rather more than a morsel), then our
bodies are telling our spirits that there is no happiness available outside of
creatures and what they can give you.
So this
little piggy goes to market, then! Off we go, confirmed by our bodies in our
spirits that what we really need to be happy is to get whatever our grubby
little hands can lay hold off and take it to ourselves by whatever means
necessary.
Fasting,
then, is the great sacramental of the true religion, the truth about human
happiness and fulfillment. By choosing to embrace a little bit of hunger (we’re
not supposed to starve ourselves), by choosing to have just that bit of
weakness, just that bit of unsatisfaction in our flesh, we form our spirits in
the deep truth of our need for God, and of God’s faithfulness in meeting that
need.
Fasting is
hard. Our world today is all about instant gratification, instant quelling of
need. Many of us were raised in such an ethos, and so self-control, embrace of
moderate hunger does not come easy to us. But the spiritual profit is huge.
And in the
context of this part of the Mandate, our going into the marketplace, fasting is
utterly essential. How can we preach the Gospel of divine love and mercy, of
the God who meets us in our need and brings us to the happiness of the kingdom,
if we are busily stuffing ourselves with whatever we think we need? Our witness
to the Gospel will be hollow and unconvincing, if we are not ourselves living
by the faith we profess.
So that is
why we fast, essentially. The other benefits of fasting are very good and
real—the mastery of the passions, the virtue of self-control and discipline,
even the physical health benefits of not always being full up. But Christian
fasting is essentially evangelical and kerygmatic, proclaiming the sufficiency
of Christ and of God to a world mad with consumption and worshipping of
creatures. So… let’s watch what we eat today, OK?
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