I remember that after my brother died I had, what I would now call, an interesting outlook on Lent and fasting. It still makes me chuckle to tell the story to others of how as a child my brother, during one Lent, declared that he was giving up of all things – circuses!

I’m not sure that we had been to a circus but once or twice our whole lives, and to my knowledge none were coming to town during that Lent.

In any case, what I told myself and others on occasion, when they asked me what I was giving up for Lent after my brother died was simply… “My brother.”  However clever sounding it may have seemed, the response certainly came from a posture of grief and loss.

When I think about it now, I realize that it really did not make any sense for me to pick out a few things to “give up,” when I already felt that I had had to give up my brother, basically for the rest of my life.  Perhaps this was a skewed and even self-indulgent way of looking at fasting, but when I reflect even now on it, there is something that I have learned about the idea of “fasting” in that.  I am not knocking the idea that fasting should include identifying areas of our lives that may prevent us from drawing closer to God.  What I am speaking about is how I have become aware that many times the intent of fasting may not be so much tied to things we choose to refrain from doing or withhold ourselves from, but instead paying particular attention to those things that already exist in our lives that we must “do without” – those imposed “fasts” that we must try to face and somehow integrate into the wholeness of our life experiences.

Twenty-four years down the road of grief for my brother, and having lost several others along the way, most recently my mom in 2016, the stark reality of loss has become somewhat of a predominant part of my life.  One of the most important things that I am learning I believe is that grief is not exclusive to my experience of it.  Everyone does or eventually will have to confront it.  Another thing I have learned is that grief comes from so many places in our world (deaths of loved ones, divorce, the loss of jobs, poverty, racism, violence, etc.)  Loss is everywhere and that means that “imposed fasting” is everywhere.

The moment that I can connect my grief with the experience of someone else, the shared experience of this becomes a shared “fast.”  My grieving over the loss of my mother is part of someone else’s grieving over a lost child.  My lamenting over the injustice of mass incarceration is connected to someone else’s concerns for the lack of food availability for families in a particular part of the world.  And that brings up what I consider to be the meaningful response to this shared experience of “fasting,” or those experiences of pain and loss that are a part of our world.

When we acknowledge those areas of imposed “fasting,” those areas in our world where loss is present, either due to the normal progression of life and death or the result of human actions and inaction, we can together act to transform the “fasting” marked by loss, grief and anger into engagement, interaction and justice.

Could this be what Isaiah is speaking about in today’s Reading (IS 58:1-9A):

“This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly,   untying the thongs of the yoke; Setting free the oppressed,   breaking every yoke; Sharing your bread with the hungry,  sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; Clothing the naked when you see them,   and not turning your back on your own.”

I cannot free myself from grief by myself, any more than someone captured in the injustice of poverty can solely use their own bootstraps to gain financial stability.   The awareness of the brokenness in my life becomes part of the brokenness in everyone’s life and vice versa.  And this shared awareness is precisely the medium within which we can help each other.   This type of “shared fasting” has the power to transform brokenness into healing relationships because this “fasting” is ultimately the experience of abundance.

When we are together, in solidarity with each other, in the many areas of brokenness that exist in our world, God is here!  God’s “fast” is the transformative gift of His son in the Incarnation (which includes self-sacrifice, suffering, death and resurrection) and our gift becomes the continuation of God present in the Body of Christ fully engaged in the healing project of mercy and justice.  It’s never a one-man or one-woman show.  It takes everyone to first recognize that the brokenness is there, then to realize that it is shared, and finally to act in faith that the healing is also shared by our full engagement with each other.

The sacrifice in “fasting” is indeed a shared engagement in the abundance of God’s providence that is always available to us.  Yes, it is good to identify those specific items in our lives that prevent us from “seeing” the brokenness in our world, but already the recognition of the brokenness is a share in the abundance of God’s love and mercy that can, if we allow it, be shared in the community.

Perhaps this is why the Gospel today (MT 9: 14-15) draws up the wedding imagery of “being with the bridegroom” as a contrast (or really a further expansion) of what true “fasting” entails:

‘ “The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?”’

The sacrifice of “fasting” is already an abundance when we realize that God is in our presence – that Jesus is here with us.  This means that when we can open ourselves out beyond our own individual concerns and distractions, we can begin to realize and heal each other’s brokenness.  Isn’t this the Gospel message?  What we think is the scarcity in our own “private” lives takes on a much larger breadth when we see that my hurt is your hurt and sometimes my actions hurt you and yours hurt me.  What starts out as a crescendo of shared hurting can be transformed into a celebration of abundance in healing.

I struggle with this daily but constantly am challenged to share my hurts and concerns, many times by simply listening to and being available to others in their brokenness.  This is a “fasting” of abundance through engagement in mercy that resounds Isaiah’s words loudly:

“Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed”

 Peace

Thomas

The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth  woven and laced together in loving pattern  by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing  awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.

(originally published March 3, 2017)