It's Time for Your Medicine

 

I know that Lent isn't "just about giving up things," but...

It very much is...ALSO...about giving up things. Mortification and penance are important medicines for our souls. We're sinners, and the giving up of things -- such as we do with fasting and abstinence -- is part of the "prescription" assigned by the Church and enshrined in Scripture.

Let's not be too easy on ourselves this Lent. It's not "self-abuse" to examine our lives and decide to forego one, two, or several "good things" out of love for God and in order to "medicate" our souls.

Lent begins this Wednesday.

Take some dedicated time today and decide what you will set aside until the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord.

The Church requires fasting (an actual reduction in the amount of food we consume) on only two days; Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Abstinence from the eating of meat (warm-blooded flesh) is required on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and on all Fridays of Lent.

That is the MINIMUM.

Your own freely chosen sacrifices are your love-offering to God.

We all need the good fruits of Holy Penance.

[photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/.../File:Envy-fasting...]

 “THE HOLY FAMILY IS IN DANGER OF INSULT; NOT EVEN BECAUSE IT IS HOLY, BUT MERELY BECAUSE IT IS A FAMILY.” 

~ G. K. Chesterton – New Witness, December 10th, 1920 

Read that again please and take note of the date on which it was published. The longer I am a student of Mr. Chesterton’s writings, the more often I find myself marveling that he seems to be—in a sense—timeless. 

What he wrote in 1920 could just as easily have been written by someone this week, as we all know that the family is under attack. Perhaps more subtly at times the attack on the family takes the form of disregard. As corporate, educational, and governmental entities cancel the words husband, wife, mother, father, son, and daughter, one can easily imagine that the very word family will also be jettisoned. 

Of course, the attack on the family is an attack on God, who is revealed to us as a family—The Most Holy Trinity. Jesus Christ is conceived in the womb of Blessed Mary and is born into a family. Jesus sends the Apostles forth to baptize us into His family, the Church. 

So yes, as Mr. Chesterton said, the Holy Family endures insult “merely because it is a family.”