It has been forever... and I could spend a whole blog post just explaining why it has been so long since I last wrote or shared any of Dad's writings. But the truth is I am not sure why there has been such a lapse in posts.
Instead I wanted to share some "notes" that Dad wrote for a talk he gave years ago.
I read through it once already but am thinking this one needs to be read through MANY times for me to really digest it all. He gives great insight on fasting and shares words of wisdom from others on this time of Lent.
Please know of my prayers for all those who read this blog and ask humbling that you keep my family in yours.
From Ashes to Fire
by David M. Thorp
1. The First Day of
Lent always contains the same readings
Joel: rend your hearts not your garments
Matthew: Almsgiving, prayer, fasting
Not separate but connected
Pope Benedict XVI’s Lenten Message is supplying me with the impetus
for this presentation
The theme of the letter is "He Fasted for Forty Days
and Forty Nights, and Afterward He Was Hungry."
2. Suggest Two
Fastings [really abstinences, although you could make them truly a fast if God
is calling you]: Food and Sound
But before that something in general about Fasting
Our Ash Wednesday reading is the first time that Jesus spoke
about fasting:
The main focus was not to recommend: Jesus assumes that
these are part of the life of his disciple:
WHEN you…
And, so, it is not also to command fasting or prayer or
almsgiving
In fact, fasting is not a command in the Scriptures
His focus is motive
When people speak about fasting they can speak about the
benefits and blessings that come to us
Richard Foster, “we would be tempted to believe that with a
little fast we could have the world, including God, eating out of our
hand.” Celebration, 48
This would be to use a good thing to our ends and doing this
is a sure sign of a false religion
Zechariah 7:5 ~ God is lamenting to his chosen but stubborn
and shallow people:
“When you fasted … was it really for me that you fasted?”
Anna in Luke 2:37, that old prophetess in the Temple, is
described this way:
She “worshipped [God] night and day with fasting and
prayer.”
Fasting was a mode of worship
John Wesley:
“First, let [fasting] be done unto the Lord with our eyes
simply fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to
glorify our Father which is in heaven…”
This is what will save us from loving the blessing more than
the Blesser
“True fasting, as the divine Master repeats elsewhere, is
rather to do the will of the Heavenly Father, who ‘sees in secret, and will
reward you’ (Mt 6,18)” Ben XVI
Fr. Slavko Barbarić:
Fasting is an exchange
From … to
If it is not, it “only becomes an unpleasant renunciation
from pleasant things.”
If it is not an exchange it is simply about death
Fasting for the sake of mortifying/for killing the flesh
And, Christianity is not about death to the flesh
If it were the Incarnation makes no sense
“Flesh” is not body in the NT but a mindset, a way of being
If it is not an exchange it easily falls into an externalism
and a legalism
For me as a child it was merely external [perhaps all it
could be for a child]
Fasting was an outward form
Or, it was tied to killing/death/suffering: Look at what
Jesus did for you. Don’t you think you could at least …?
And, it became law
Which has a
manipulative power
Is always
looking for an escape clause: an exception
Pepperoni
pizza consumed at one minute after midnight on the Fridays of Lent
And, any externalism and legalism easily steps into a focus
on the self and a judgment of others [parable of the Pharisee and tax
collector]
So,
We are back to motive, interior disposition
And to exchange
What is the exchange?
Ben XVI:
Paul VI saw the need to present fasting within the call of
every Christian to "no longer live for himself, but for Him who loves him
and gave himself for him, he will also have to live for his brethren"
Pope John Paul II wrote that the ultimate goal of fasting is
to help each one of us to make the complete gift of self to God
3. Fasting From …
Fasting for/to
(a) In a common experience: Eucharistic fast
Not as it was: midnight, three hours when the option for
afternoon Masses was authorized, one hour
The thought, the intention
Fast from bread to receive the Living Bread
Fast from meat to meet the One who satisfies every hunger
(b) From something
good, fasting for something better
Genesis 1: good,
good, good
Someone who is continually going for the good, savoring the
good is described as an
Aesthetic person by Kierkegaard
Problem and very great danger: never satisfied, there is
never enough, there is never rest because there is always the q: is there
something more, better …
(c) From limitations
to the infinite
This cannot satisfy
“Give
your desires free reign, setting absolutely no limits, no boundaries to them.
Listen to me: let your hearts demand the infinite, for I can tell you how to
fill them. There is never one moment in which I cannot show you how to find
whatever you can desire. The present moment is always overflowing with
immeasurable riches, far more than you are able to hold.”
Abandonment to Divine
Providence. Jean-Pierre de Caussade
(d) From grasping to receiving
From compulsions ~ I have to have when I want to have and
how I want to have
From allowing the nonessentials to take precedence in our
life
To receiving
To the
acknowledgment that everything is a gift; gratitude
In some ways, the original commandment was cal to fast: You can eat of everything except the fruit of
the tree in the middle of the garden.
What if Eve and Adam responded to the tempter by saying: Let
us first see and touch and smell and taste all the things that we can before we
approach the one thing that we cannot
The tempter couldn’t have waited that long
(f) From what covers me in order to be uncovered before God
so that I can be filled by and for God
Look at/consider that from which you are fasting: Why do I like it? What does it do for me?
What does it do to me? Is it a substitute? For what? Is it a distraction? From what? Is it a
“filler”? What is it filling?
Fr. Anslem Grün, OSB
Through fasting, I free myself of the encasement that has
arched over my restless thoughts and feelings. In this way, everything that is
within me can be revealed: my unfulfilled desires and longings, my passions, my
thoughts which encircle me around, my success, my possessions … and my feelings
such as anger, bitterness and sorrow. The wounds that I bury through numerous
activities and by various means of self-consolation in food and drink are
uncovered. Everything that is repressed comes to light. Fasting shows me who I
am. It shows me where I am endangered and where I must start my battle.
What controls us will soon be revealed when we fast
We may rationalize that the anger or irritability or
impatience that comes when we fast was caused by fasting
But, if we are honest, we will admit that that they were
already within us and now just uncovered, revealed because we were no longer
covering them with food, drink, activities
But, this is never the end
The end is the healing or the removal of these things by the
Healer so that we can be filled with him
(g) From selfishness to service
If of gratitude emerges we also can be brought to a sense of
stewardship
Why did God
give this gift? Any gift?
What can I
do with His gifts but “re-gift” them?
Ben
XVI
…fasting
is an aid to open our eyes to the situation in which so many of our brothers
and sisters live. In his First Letter, Saint John admonishes: "If anyone
has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need, yet shuts up his bowels of
compassion from him -- how does the love of God abide in him?" (3,17).
Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who
bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus
caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of
another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a
stranger… From the beginning, this has been the hallmark of the Christian
community, in which special collections were taken up (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15,
25-27), the faithful being invited to give to the poor what had been set aside
from their fast (Didascalia Ap., V, 20,18).
4. Silence
Be quiet/still and
know that I am God
Fasting from food is so much easier than the fast from sound
We are fidget-ers
Physically
Mentally
Spiritually
And, we live in a society that values this: multi-tasking we call it
For us noise/sound/activity has become the norm and silence,
stillness, solitude has become regarded as the disturbance
Freedom from words, noise, distractions
And a freedom for Word, presence
This is not easy
Because silence can be frightening and threatening ~ at
least at first and maybe for a long while
When we turn off the sound/noise, a new noise almost
instantly turns on, rising from within, an interior discussion starts up and it
seems to get out of hand
When the outside noise is silenced, the inside restlessness
emerges
One person described it as a “chaotic tumble” of feelings
and thoughts that I seem to have hidden from myself or I’ve neglected while I
have been busy doing things in the outer world
Nouwen:
It makes you wonder if the diversion we look for in the many
things outside us might not be an attempt to avoid a confrontation with what is
inside.
Do I fill my ears, my mind with sound and sight because there
is an inner emptiness, disquiet
Me and tinnitus: The radio, CD’s, TV mask the constant
buzzing in my head
Lately I’ve wondered if I’m only using that as an excuse for
avoiding the real buzzing in my spirit
Practice silence/solitude
~ take tiny snatches of time
in the car
linger over
“surprises” to the eyes [a person’s face, a tree/landscape], ears [birds,
laugh], nose [night air, coffee], to the mouth, to the hand
redeem
these flashes
~ find a place in your home:
quiet zone, prayer corner
~ find a regular place outside your home: here for Adoration
~ experiment with a day without words
~ Lectio divina: more
about the silence than about the words
