Lent: Fasting and Following the Lord: Some worthwhile ideas

Dear Friends,

Lent begins on Wednesday, all fresh and new. I hope you have some good, simple ideas to draw on that can help Lent be fresh even a month from now. Here are two short pieces that others have written which I have found helpful in past Lenten times. You may want to weigh the ideas within them for their worth.

The first is an excerpt from the Abbey of the Arts by Christine Valters Paintner. She says, and we can echo

   “I am called to fast from being strong…to allow a great softening…

    I am called to fast from anxiety… and enter into radical trust…

    I am called to fast from speed…causing me to miss the grace shimmering right here…

    I am called to fast from multitasking...beholding each thing, each person, each moment…

    I am called to fast from endless list-making…and enter into the quiet and listen…

    I am called to fast from certainty and trust in the great mystery of things…”

This second piece is from an unpublished  article by Rochesterian  P. David Finks;

   “Lent is the time for getting into the habit of following Christ, but never letting following
    Christ become an empty habit…following is not easy business.  It requires a tranquil 
    and trusting spirit…In order to follow, you need to be free from the bonds of any place or
    time, you need to be free from the chains of possessions or habits, you  need to be free
    from the shackles of selfish expectations…Jesus walks into the place where we are and
    says ‘Follow me.’… Right here, right now, in the midst of the everyday facts of life. His call
    is that we follow him into all the broken places of life to renew and make them who call is
    still hard, and his call is still easy to evade and avoid…Yet hearing that voice speak your
    name, saying ‘Come, follow me,’ you can do nothing else but lay down control and
    selfishness and all your self-absorbed fussing, and take up the cause of this stupendous
    stranger whose mission is light and life and love. Lent means following  Christ – trying to
    express in our lives the same kind of reconciling love he did.”

Fast and follow – two loaded words to imprint on the inside of our eyelids so that we see them every morning as we are struggling to wake up. Lenten words to live by: Fast from the destructive interior motor that drives us – literally drives us into not seeing Christ and not hearing his call to follow him.

I wish you a slowly unfolding Lent which promises the companionship of Christ daily.

~Sister Joan Sobala