The Ascension of the Lord | 7th Sunday of Easter

Christ has Risen, as He said He would, Alleluia!!! Nearly every year during Lent, someone will tell me, “I don’t fast from anything during Lent. I just add something extra!” Certainly, I highly encourage the addition of an extra devotional, Holy Hour, Stations of the Cross, Rosary, daily Mass attendances during the week, etc. It is a great means to increase the time spent focusing on God amid the many distractions of the world. Of course, adding in that extra devotion during the 40-days of Lent, might lead to it becoming a holy habit in the Easter season & beyond. Typically, I’ve always thought about fasting as an essential step to the adding new. We fast to make room in our lives & then infill that space with the new holy habit. Even now in the Easter season, we can still think about Prayer + Fasting + Almsgiving. They are not set aside for another year, even while they are less of a focus in the writing & preaching of the Church now. But the real reason, I bring up the practice of adding versus fasting is because of the world around us. It is interesting how much Catholic Christians struggle with, resist, & fully ignore the importance of Fasting as a spiritual practice. There can be this sort of unspoken & unrecognized subconscious thought that “we’ve out grown those ‘medieval practices’, like Fasting.” We haven’t. The struggles against sinful flesh, while conquered by Christ’s victory upon the Cross precisely by the sacrifice of His human flesh, are still present. What is new, is His Victory has unleashed grace to make our victory possible in our personal struggles with our flesh, whether sexual, stomach, sleepiness & the like. But what I also find even more strange is that, just when we Catholic Christians seem to be fasting from Fasting, the world is promoting it. Many in the world are embracing it whole heartedly, even spreading the word of its value as if it were the Gospel Good News. In fact, just talk to someone who has recently discovered the value of “intermittent fasting” and they do their best to encourage, cajole, convince you that you should try it too! A search of the web of ‘benefits of the intermittent fasting’ will provide you a whole string of websites extolling its physical, mental, & emotional benefits. From the Mayo Clinic’s website: “Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating based on time limits. For a set time of hours or days, you eat a typical diet. At the end of the set time, you switch to very few or no calories, called fasting… The idea is that intermittent fasting causes the body's cells to change how they work. Timed eating may push cells to focus on repair, energy use, and balancing body-wide functions. Research shows that intermittent fasting may improve some signs of health in the short term. These include: blood sugar, weight, blood cholesterol, blood pressure & chronic inflammation.” Now in full disclosure, on the same Mayo Clinic webpage, they also caution that such fasting may or may not have long term benefits. There is a lack of long-term studies & data from which to draw conclusive conclusions. < mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/intermittent-fasting/faq-20441303 > We Catholics should know (& promote!?!) the value of Fasting. But not for its physical, mental & emotional benefits (although those too are good!!!), but because of its spiritual benefits. Its aid in self-mastery. Its contributions to conquering sin in our lives. Yet, rarely have I heard a lay Catholic try to encourage, cajole, or convince their non-Catholic or especially a non-Christian friend of the importance of such a practice in their lives. Why is it the secular world has no difficulty taking a perfectly sound religious practice (not just Catholic) and promoting it; yet, we faithful cannot do the same for specifically religious reasons?!? Fasting is just one such area which the Church has promoted that has since been adopted & expounded by the secular world, but stripped of its religious significance. Did you know that Natural Family Planning (the only approved method of regulating births & stewarding a couple’s fecundity) is more readily preached & promoted & implemented by the all-natural secular crowd than talked about or practiced by the Catholic Christians who did much of the work to develop the medical science behind it. Women who want organic, non-hormone infused foods, more readily adopt the non-hormonal NFP than Catholic Christian women whom God has instructed!?! Similarly, someone sent me an online article expounding the value of ‘resting one day a week’, from a completely secular perspective. Go figure?! God rested on the seventh day, but that’s not a good enough reason?!?! There are many articles touting the transformative power of daily meditation… but when Holy Mother Church reminds us its necessary to pray every day, we’re too busy. It’s interesting that the world is re-discovering the value of practices that used to be common place practice among Christians? Yet, how is it that the Christianity has nothing to offer, when the world is going the long way round just to arrive at what we already know – lives directed & shaped by Faith in Jesus Christ?!? Nothing Less than saints for the Holy Family of God. Holy Family, Living Resurrection Glory through our daily practices, Pray for us. ~ Fr Jeremy M. Gries