Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving - in harmony with human nature

Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are works of piety that make space for a right use of reason. Many spiritual people do not connect works of piety with reason or love or freedom.  Without making good use of reason, freedom and love, our works of piety will fall short of our Lenten Observance, and the healing that this season offers us will not be realized.

We must confront some popular misconceptions about our human reality. Reason is presumed as cold and calculating, the dispassionate part of our psychology whose purpose is exhausted in minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities. Freedom is associated with selfish indulgence and escape from responsibility.  Love is often thought to be irrational or opposed to reason or simply a feeling. Although to the extend that they are isolated from one another some of these presumptions about these spiritual realities might be true, God created these wonderful powers to be related in a kind of sacred harmony resonating in the spiritual interior of our lives.

Frequent confession and extra-sacramental penance like making a pilgrimage or observing Friday abstinences are aids to this difficult work.  It is a manner of asceticism, of spiritual practice, out of love for the Lord. It is not a matter of accomplishment or achievement, but a matter of vulnerable surrender and humbling ourselves before an inestimable gift. To fully realize our God-given human vocation, we must do everything we can to tune and discipline our use of reason and piety, love and freedom until they are made to resound in divinizing harmony through our spiritual exercises this Lent.

The harmony of reason, freedom and love with works of piety is gift upon gift - restoring and perfecting the image and likeness of God in us.  The gift of human reason is given by God so that we might use our freedom to love in a manner that gives Him glory. Through the Holy Spirit who prays in us, the gifts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving expand the capacity of reason to find the holy freedom such divinized love demands -- a freedom that gives space to everything that is good and authentic in our humanity and that frees us from everything that is not worthy of the noble calling that we have received.

Because of sin and its limiting power, unaided reason by itself cannot secure this kind of freedom.  So we surrender to the Holy Spirit who convinces us of sin and the deep things of God. He prompts us to be merciful when we are otherwise thoughtless or resentful, and He moves us to venture with love into situations that we would otherwise find inconvenient and repulsive. When the Holy Spirit raises reason up in prayer, when the limited designs of our hearts are pierced by the limitless designs in His, the vast expanse of human frailty is laid bare and capacities unfamiliar to us are revealed.  It is here, in this desert wilderness, that the music of heaven is waiting to fill.  It in this emptiness and poverty of heart that the divine harmony of human reason, freedom, love and piety resounds.

The Blood of the Lamb and the Sign of the Cross

For Christians, the ancient rites of Passover and the Passion of Christ are deeply connected.   To deliver the People of God from slavery in Egypt, God sent an angel of death, a great power that stole from families the lives of those they deemed most precious.   To protect His own People from this destroying angel, He commanded the Hebrews to gather as families, slaughter a lamb and to sprinkle the blood of this lamb on the doorposts of their homes.  Seeing the blood, the angel of destruction passed over the homes of those who belonged to the Lord.  In the tradition of Christian prayer, this sprinkled blood foreshadows the power of the Blood of Christ signified by the Sign of the Cross.  So much did the early Christians connect their faith in the Blood of Christ with that of the saving events of the Passover, St. Paul explains, "Our Paschal Lamb, Christ has been Sacrificed" 1 Cor. 5:7.

Ecce Homo
By St. Albert Chmielowski of Krakow

The Gospels explicitly connect the sacred rites of the Last Supper of the Lord with the Passover celebration.  There are also other theological contexts connecting the sacrifice of the lamb with the Cross of Christ. (See Mark 15:25-37.)  In the Gospel of John, according to St. Augustine in Tractate 117, Jesus dies on the Day of Preparation for the Passover, the day on which lambs were slaughtered for the celebration of passover (See John 19:14).  The diversity of these Scriptural traditions is symphonic, speaking to the inexhaustible horizons of the Lord's saving work, a mystery so vast and beautiful the only proper response is thanksgiving (eucharist).

Whenever we prayerfully reflect on the beautiful connections of our salvation prefigured in Exodus and fulfilled in Christ, our hearts are made vulnerable to the vision of the early Christians.  Their vision was filled with wonder over the blood of the sacrificial lamb and what it revealed about the Mystery of the Cross.   They marveled over how the blood that was shed in ancients rites foreshadowed the Blood of Christ they received by faith and they rooted their worship in this contemplation.

"The Passion of the Christ was prefigured by the Jews when they received the command to mark the doors of their houses with blood.  It is by the sign of His Passion and Cross that you must be marked today on the forehead, as on a door, and that all Christians are marked."  St. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 167.

St. Augustine is connecting the ancient rite of sprinkling the blood of the lamb, a saving sign for the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, with the cross that is given in the baptismal rites, a saving sign for those seeking freedom from sin.  Before baptism, the Church entrusts the Sign of the Cross to the chosen catechumen by tracing a cross on the forehead with the Oil of Catechumens.   This ancient Christian rite is continued in our Catholic practice today.   Those who receive the Sign of the Cross (sphargis)  through this anointing are safe from demonic attack in a manner similar to the way ancient Hebrew families were saved from the angel of death.   The blood of God, the life of God, is more powerful than evil.

"There is no other way to escape the destroying angel than by the blood of God, Who by love has poured out His blood for us.  And by this blood, we receive the Holy Spirit.  Indeed the Spirit and the blood are related in such a way that by the blood which is connatural to us, we receive the Spirit which is not con natural, and the gate of death is closed to our souls.  Such is the sphragis of the blood."  Paschal Homilies of Pseudo-Chrysostom as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 166. 

Making the Sign of the Cross is like covering ourselves in the Blood of Jesus.  Whenever we make the Sign of the Cross with devout faith, we are renewing our baptismal commitment and the Lord communicates His life to us in new and unimaginable ways.  This Sign of Victory plunges us into the saving power of God foreshadowed in the Exodus.  In a world of all kinds of slavery and death, this Sign of Freedom reminds us that God has intervened.

This Sign of Salvation proclaims to all principalities of destruction and powers of darkness that God Himself has implicated Himself in our plight and helps us remember that we are never alone -- no matter how difficult or dark the circumstances we must face.  This Sign of Hope renews our faith that the saving power of His Blood is such that no matter how intense the struggle, no irrational force in the heavens above or on the earth below is able to surmount the love of God.  Through renewing this Seal of our Hearts, the heart covers itself again with the Blood of the Lamb so that even in death it knows Eternal Life.

Pope Francis and the Pathway to Easter

 "Rend your hearts and not your garments.  Return to the Lord your God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in mercy."  Joel 2:13

Pope Francis I was just elected.  It is as if God just gave us the bishop from Les Miserables as pope.   A member of the Society of Jesus, a man of deep prayer and a priest of profound concern for the poor.  At the beginning of Lent, preaching on a text from the Prophet Joel, he made an impassioned plea to the clergy and religious of Argentina, "The Kingdom of God may need our hearts torn by the desire for conversion and for the love, the breaking forth of grace and the effective gesture to ease the pain of our brothers and sister who walk together with us."

His message is poignant against indifference to sin and the social evils that choke out the life of prayer.   No one can pray very deeply if they are callous to those God has entrusted to us, especially the most vulnerable.   At the same time, this wound of sin is too deep to be addressed by merely external actions and gestures.   Our hearts must be torn by the fact that we are not effectively protecting and loving the most vulnerable in our society.  The love of God heals sin and wakes us up out of our spiritual slumber.  This is the threshold to deep intimacy with Christ who is also concerned for the plight of the most vulnerable and identifies Himself with them.   I have offered some further reflections over at Dan Burke's Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction blog.

In the meantime, here is a report from a seminarian in Rome.  

The Mysterious Prayer of Gethsemane

There are stories about great saints who struggled to pray in the face of great difficulty.   This can be baffling until we try to enter into the Passion of Christ and consider the movements of His Heart before the merciful love of the Father.  Until we contemplate the prayer of the Word of the Father, this struggle to pray is often deemed to be merely a stage through which we pass.   Yet, in the Garden of Gethsemane (see Luke 22:35ff), the bloody sweat of the Son of God reveals this struggle as a supreme moment of Christian contemplation, a terrifying standard against which the truth of all our other prayers can be discerned.

The hymn of praise learned with the Suffering Servant on the Mount of Olives is shrouded in a mystery.  It is against this mystery that therapeutic approaches to prayer should be discerned.  Psychological or physical tantrums are silenced before the authentic cry of heart offered by the Son of Man.  His love for his disciples and devotion to the Father challenges any consumerist attitude toward the things of God.   His sorrow and spiritual poverty helps us feel the appropriate shame we ought to have over any gluttonous expectation for mental relief or euphoric experience.  Against the dark terror Jesus confronts in prayer, spiritual consumerism can only be seen as limiting the freedom that our conversation with the Lord requires.   

The Word made flesh baptized every moment of his earthly life in this kind of prayer.   Every heart beat and every breath was so filled with zeal for the Father and those the Father gave Him, divine love ever exploded in His sacred humanity with resounding silence, astonishing signs, heart-aching wonders and words of wisdom which even after two thousand years still give the world pause.  Each verse of the Gospels attempts to show us His self-emptying divinity boldly hurling His prayerful humanity with the invincible force of love to the Cross.  

In Gethsemane we glimpse how the Son of Man availed Himself to these mysterious promptings of the Father's love, an unfathomable love that is not comfortable to our limited humanity.   Unaided human reason cannot penetrate the divine passion that compelled Him into the solitude hidden mountains and secret gardens.   His vigil on the Mount of Olives can only be understood as the culmination of the ongoing conversation to which He eagerly made His humanity vulnerable.   

If, in this culminating movement of heart, Christ sweat blood, we who have decided to follow in the footsteps of our Crucified Master should not be surprised by moments of great anguish in our own conversation with God.  In the face of this mystery, we must allow the Risen Lord to give us His courage.   What is revealed on the Mount of Olives helps us see why Christian prayer can mature into a beautiful surrender, a movement of love which gives glory to the Father and extends the redemptive work of the Redeemer in the world.   What Christian contemplation sees with the Son of God can involve very difficult struggle, through the strength that comes from the Savior even the terrifying moments of such prayer can resolve themselves in trustful surrender: "Not my will... Yours be done."  

A vision of prayer that contemplates in the midst of terror and anguish is probably not a popular subject, but I think a very important one today.   For further reflection on this I refer you to "Blessings that are Difficult to Receive" on Dan Burke's Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction blog.

The Freedom of God in Our Freedom

Sometimes we look at religious observance as a kind of holy imposition, a yoke, a burden.  We can even look being observant as an inconvenience to which we submit as if we were somehow manipulated into it.  Although we cannot do very much about such feelings (they come and go whether we like it or not), there is a deeper truth for which we forsake not the discipline of our faith - a truth that dances in the sacred melodies of love and freedom.

The Lenten Observance is a time of discovering the liberty of God in our freedom, and in discovering this, also tasting a new liberty.  This is a freedom that the narrow limits of this present life cannot fully contain. It orients us to a life over which sin and death have no power.

In the discipline of the Christian life, that holy exercise of our faith, God freely works through our freedom to restore our dignity and to help us discover our true identity in His eyes.  Our choices, especially those we make out of love, are the very stuff of this divine industry.  Despite our spiritual sluggishness, He is constantly making all things new in our lives and in the world with unimpeded sovereignty - and this even when sometimes we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved and traded our dignity for pottage unworthy of the children of God.  How can we respond in any other way to God's faithfulness to us than by renouncing our sins and taking up the discipline again?

Hidden though it is from our distracted gaze, the saving presence of the Risen Lord is freely directing the smallest, the most ordinary, the most humble things.  Accepting His loving Providence in the little hidden things in life is the fountain of all genuine freedom in our lives - a smile to the busy clerk at the grocery store, a kind word in exchange for a rude remark, allowing someone to inconvenience you a little so that they might know they are loved.  We need to be careful when He gently proposes and disposes, or our hearts will be pierced in such a way we may never be able to live the same again - for our freedom given in love opens up whole horizons for His freedom to work in.

This secret freedom offered us in all kinds of hidden events is the saving liberty of divine love.  It gushes from the side of the Word made flesh.  It is meant to ring through the whole of our existence, bringing every fiber of our being into its sacred harmony.  It is a canticle so beautiful that we find ourselves our old way of life mortally wounded while we are also animated by a new life totally other than this old tired world can hold down.

It is in this freedom of the Cross that the chorus of creation and the cacophony of sin are taken up in this new symphony of grace.  In the wonder of this divine melody something like the childlike freedom of real song, play and dance are unleashed into humanity: we, welcoming God's gift of Himself; He embracing us, as we give the gift of ourselves to Him and through Him to one another.

To glimpse the wonder of divine freedom at play and to have the freedom to join this dance, we must freely choose to exercise our faith.  This means deciding in each instant to fill this particular moment given to me right here and right now with all the love I can    Prayer, fasting and the works of mercy make space for this kind of freedom, this divine liberty in our humanity.   The more love we put into these holy exercises, the more we discover those hidden choices most open to the tender subtlety of His power.

Lent - praying from the heart

During Lent, we dedicate ourselves to prayer, fasting and alms-giving.   These practices are simple ways of expressing our gratitude to Jesus for what He has done for us.  This in fact is the very nature of penance.  Penance is love which responds to mercy - and this love is not content with words, thoughts and feelings.  This love needs to express itself in a prayer that cries from the heart, in sacrifice that really costs, and in little hidden acts of kindness that comfort those who most need it.

Why do we allow God to implicate us in the plights of others, especially during Lent?  God's love suffers the personal plight each of us.  He does this because He does not want us to suffer alone.  So He seeks us out in our suffering - the suffering that we have brought on ourselves and the suffering that others have brought on us.   He is concerned about our dignity and He is ready to do whatever it takes that we might be rectified and stand with Him who is Love Himself.  The extent to which He enters into our misery for this purpose is revealed on the Cross.  If we are to be His disciples, we must pick up our cross and follow Him.  This is how the Lord extends His saving mystery through space and time - He loves us so much He implicates us in this great work of His Love.

No matter how many times we fail, no matter how great our weaknesses, no matter how inadequate we are to the demands of love -- He is there with us, loving us, providing exactly what we need in the moment, and this because He really loves us that much.   How can we not respond by offering Him food and drink when we recognize Him in the disguise of those who hunger and thirst?  How can we not respond by forgoing a little comfort and convenience when He has already suffered so much discomfort and inconvenience for us?  How can we not respond by praying for those who need the love of God when He has never forgotten us in His love for the Father?

When prayer, sacrifice and generosity come together in thanksgiving to God for His goodness to us, deep places of the heart are purified and we rediscover the joy humanity was meant to know from the beginning.  Lent is all about this joy - a joy God's love allows us to know, the joy of being sons and daughters of God, the joy of heart so beautiful it would be wrong not to share it with those who need a little joy as well.

Would you like to hear this in audio file?  Click here. Courtesy of Kris McGregor of www.DiscerningHearts.com.

In an explanation of St. John of the Cross's teaching, I have offered some more thoughts on praying from the heart at Dan Burke's Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction.

The Mystery of Mercy and Penance

Pope John Paul II, soon to be recognized as among the Blessed, understood the importance of mercy and penance in the Christian life.  He understood mercy to be love which suffers the misery of the beloved in order to affirm the beloved's dignity.  Penance he explained in terms of a loving response for mercy received.  In his thought, mercy and penance as moments of intimacy between God and humanity coincide on the cross.

The Pilgrim Pope explores these ideas in his teachings by reflecting on Jesus' parable of the prodigal son.  In this parable, the sons (who are more concerned about things than persons) are contrasted with the father (who is more concerned for his sons than things).  The truth about justice is revealed in the implications this parable has regarding our response to mercy.  Justice is not enough for the human spirit.  Instead, in the order of mercy, justice serves our love for one another.  The handmade of mercy, it protects the conditions that true friendship, true family demands.  

The Beginning of Contrition
The son came to his senses.  A key moment in this parable is when the prodigal son realizes not only his impoverished plight but also sees that he has broken his relationship with his father.  His life project had become a failure and he had squandered his possessions and his dignity.  Mysteriously, because he has not completely forgotten his father's love, he has confidence, enough confidence to begin his journey home.  It is not that he presumes he is owed anything at all.  Instead, his heart has an insight into the heart of his father - he sees that truth a child always sees in a good father, a goodness that inspires confidence.  Knowing this, he does not doubt that there would still be a place for him in his father's home, if only as a servant.  In a certain way, this kind of confidence is like the beginning of contrition or true sorrow for our sin.  This kind of sorrow springs out of our humble confidence in the goodness of God.

Mercy
The father sees his son coming from a long way off and his heart is pierced by the plight of his son - and he runs to embrace him.  The story is told as if the father had been anxiously awaiting his son's return, as if he was even impatient that it had taken so long.  But this is exactly the character of merciful love -  it yearns, aches, sorrows over the beloved - especially because it cannot bear the thought that even for a moment the beloved would be deprived of dignity.  It is impatient to suffer anything that the dignity of the beloved might be restored.  In the case of the father, he would suffer being misunderstood, rejected and humiliated - but for love of both sons, he could not have it any other way.  Through Christ crucified, God the Father communicates this kind of suffering love to humanity - so that only by passing through the wounds of Christ may one cross the threshold of union with God.

Penance
The parable of Christ reveals a reality to which we must respond.  When we see the heart of God pierced by our plight, our hearts must not remain unmoved.  His sorrow must pierce us, too.  The only adequate value response to the suffering love of God is to embrace it in loving gratitude.  And we can only love at our own expense.  Sacrifice, intercession, renunciation, restitution, trials, perseverance, bearing with one another, suffering abandonment, betrayal, denial, persecution, rejection - all these are but a small return for the love the Father has given us through his Son - love crucified for our sakes.  

Lent: St. Bernard's Vision of Humility and Pride

We waste a lot of time thinking something is owed us.   We brood over injury.  We are not self-contained.  Lent helps us remember the real truth about ourselves and our situation.  The wisdom of the saints, like St. Bernard, helps us see our actual situation.  His teachings suggest we can be free of brooding and find a new kind of self-possession when we allow the Lord to preoccupy us with his immeasurable love.   We are, in fact, loved so much more than we deserve, but we can only see this as God leads us out of ourselves and into Him. 

For St. Bernard, conversion happens when we allow God's love for us to cause a constantly expanding desire for Him in our hearts.  We allow God to stir this growing desire whenever we act on what God's love prompts us to do in our hearts.  Growing in love in this way is infallible because God's desire for our conversion never changes.   The result is as we desire God more, our freedom to act and to love grows ever stronger.

This next statement is a little paradoxical.  Our freedom reaches its fullness in mature humility.  The paradox resolves itself, at least partially, if we bear in mind the kind of only kind of freedom Bernard believes in - the freedom to love.  Mature humility is like a mountain top of self-possession or self containment for St. Bernard.  Love demands this kind of self-containment because to really love freely takes the full force of our being.  In mature humility, the heart rests content in God's bountiful love.  It is a strange contentment because it demands constant vigilance, ongoing conversion.   Bernard calls this spiritual warfare.  It involves a constant struggle against our former way of life, against the gravitational pull of our big fat egos.  Another way he looks at it is that this kind of contentment to be sustained in the Lord must keep vigil against them movements of pride.

For those who want to climb to union with God, Bernard teaches that there is one great truth of which we must come to complete acceptance.  In his Ladder of Pride, he explains how we constantly work to fully accept God's love for us.  This love is not commensurate with anything we think we have done to earn it.  The moment we start thinking we are owed something is the exact instant we climb the ladder of pride and fall out of the heights of humility.

There are probably a lot of people who think that this is psychologically unhealthy to think about.   They would probably conjecture that any awareness one has of being loved more than he deserves is really just poor self-esteem.  But humility is the virtue that regulates self-esteem.  It is singularly unhealthy to esteem one's self more or less than the truth about who one is.  

St. Bernard would say that in truth, each of us is uncommonly loved by God, eventhough we have done nothing to deserve such love.   We do not know why we are loved in this way.  But we are, in all our unworthiness.  It is humility to accept this.  Paradoxically, progress is made in the spiritual life through the growing awareness of our own unworthiness in the face of God's incalculable love.

In the heights of humility, however, we must fight against one uncharitable preoccupation which, while not seeming to be vicious, can uttlerly destroy our ability to learn to love.  He calls it curiousity, but what he means seems to be closer to ambition.    Biblically, it is the pursuit of "making an name" for oneself.  Think of Babel or the history of Israel.  The ambition to lord over others and to draw attention to oneself always leads away from God.  St. Bernard, pride begins with the way that we look at our brothers and sisters, and it ends in a total rejection of God.  His bottomline is that the heights of humility are a protected place as long as we we are humble in our dealings with one another.  But the gravity of pride constantly pulls at us and, he explains, this pull can only be resisted through prayer, fasting, and humble acceptance of those trials which come our way.

Prayer, fasting and the acceptance of trial helps us realize that our true value is in God's love for us and in his love for those he has entrusted us.   Real self-esteem is rooted in this realization.   Our lives are meant to co-inhere: to co-inhere in God and to co-inhere in one another.   This means the joys and sorrows of God and my brothers and sisters belong to me, are the proper place for my heart to dwell.  Preoccupation with making a name for myself takes my heart out of this kind of self-possession.  For Bernard, the self does not fully exist isolated from God or from others.  The self, the human "I," ought to be in communion with God and others, or it is less than itself.   Thus, to be self-contained, means for Bernard, that our only concern has become communion with one another in Christ.   

An interesting application with the observance of Lent presents itself.   Traditionally, Lent is a time of prayer, fasting and almsgiving.   In other posts I hope to address the connection of Bernard's insight with Lent's prayer and fasting.   Here, just a word on almsgiving which is not unconnected with the importance of bearing the trials that come our way.   In giving alms to those in desparate need what we are really doing, according to Bernard's perspective, is containing ourselves in a very small way.  Our gift is a kind of sharing in the struggles of our brothers and sisters.  Think of the poor plight of those in Chile or Haiti or even the homeless mentally ill on our own streets.  Their sufferings are always connected to us because of who they are, and humility, knowing the truth about ourselves and how we are connected to them, does not afford us the luxury of ignoring their plight.  Their plight is ours.   For St. Bernard, to see it any other way is just pride.

Coming into Lent's Home Stretch

As we come into the end of Lent, its time to renew our resolutions for the Lord and to draw closer to Him. One way of doing this is by renewing our efforts to love those who are closest to us, and this is best done with the help of prayer. This kind of goes with the traditional connection between prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Let me explain.

Prayer is bound to an authentic love of neighbor. Prayer that does not lead into the hearts of others remains immature and is inclined to selfish preoccupation. Love of neighbor without prayer cannot draw strength from God and is inclined to hubris. True prayer informs charitable works for others so that those needs much deeper than the merely material can be met. Such prayer is already in itself a supreme act of charity, a profound experience of mercy. It goes deep into the sufferings of others and suffers with them, even when nothing else seems to be possible to do.

Through prayer, sometimes by prayer alone, those in distress discover that they are not alone and that their existence matters. This is because prayer is essentially a movement of divine love, or at least a movement in response to such love, even when that love seems absent. It is also true, however, that sometimes prayer is not enough by itself. Sometimes prayer needs to be expressed in action - and this is especially true for those who do not know they are loved.

But prayer is not something purely subjective - it is rather inter-subjective by nature. I mean that prayer involves persons - not only me and God, but me God and neighbor. This is an aspect of prayer that comes in handy as we close in on the end of Lent.

St. John Bosco says it is not enough to love children, children need to know they are loved. What is true of children is also true of about everybody in our life. When we join prayer and love for others together, a question that I like to ask, "Lord, how can I let your love be known."

To be honest, the answer is not always clear when I ask the question. But when I find myself in a situation, what needs to be done becomes very clear. It is a matter of being attentive, of being vigilant about what the Lord is doing in a given situation.

Recognizing how to be an instrument of God's love for someone is exponentially easier when it involves someone we do not know. When it is someone we know, I find myself not as willing. This might be because people we know expect more from us, especially when we do not feel like giving anything. Quite often when an acquaintance or stranger is involved, their expectations are pretty low. Then, after one has given what one has to give, there is the safe escape. This kind of love, the love we can escape from, is not a great love.

Those who are dear to us demand a great love, that is why we do not like letting others get close to us. From those who are bound to us in love, there is no safe escape. The needs of the human heart are infinite and the greater its expectations, the more we will disappoint. Long after our hands are completely empty, I see those whom I love the most need more than I have to give.

This is a great place to be. It is the place where God calls us beyond our human limitations and into the greatness of his Love. God the Father wants us to love like the widow Jesus praises. So this characterizes the kind of almsgiving that goes with prayer and love of neighbor. While everyone else gives from the extra they do not need, Christ calls Christians to give out of their own need, like the widow. This means, He commands us to love beyond our human capacity to love. This transforming place is so very painful, but it is also our finest moment, the moment when we are most like God, when we image God perfectly. God the Father stands before us with empty hands because he has given everything to us in his Son. When love demands everything from us, we become the living icon of God the Father - for we too stand before him with empty hands.

How do we do this? When we have reached the end of our humanity, beyond which there is nothing more to give, what else can we do but go to prayer? Only through prayer can we go beyond the limits of our self-reliance to rely on the Lord alone. Prayer opens up the possibility of a new kind of love, a supernatural love - which loves beyond what our human nature can give. This is very humbling to experience. To allow this kind of love requires we create room in our hearts, space that can only be created through self-denial. This is where fasting comes into the mix. Here it is not only a fasting from food or abstaining from meat. This kind of fasting also includes fasting from what is comfortable for me to do, allowing myself to be pushed into those uncomfortable sacrifices others need if they are to know they our loved. Such sacrifice is impossible without prayer.

When we love with this kind of love, God is in control. It is Him, not us, His power, not ours. That is why our prayer must be constant. Prayer is an act whereby we rely on the Lord and draw our strength from Him, from doing his will. So this is the acseticism I propose for this home stretch of Lent.