March 18, 2009

‘He Fasted’: A reflection on the Pope’s 2009 Lenten Message

Why penance?

By Father Alvaro Montero

Pope Benedict recently wrote that “Lent could be a propitious time to present again the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution Paenitemini on Fast and Abstinence (of Pope Paul VI), so that the authentic and perennial significance of this long held practice may be rediscovered.” What did Paul VI write in 1966?

Penance
What is Christian penance? Paul VI wrote that “penance is a personal act which has as its aim love and surrender to God.” He continues, “One goes without food or gives away his property…to prepare oneself for the encounter with God.” Benedict XVI comments that “fasting is proposed to us as an instrument to restore friendship with God.”

Penance is a tool to cast aside whatever distracts the spirit from our love of God and neighbor. Penance makes sense within the dynamism towards God, with our heart set on the world that will never end.

Internal and external penance
According to Paul VI, “external practices are accompanied by an inner attitude of ‘conversion,’ that is to say of condemnation of and detachment from sin and of striving toward God.” Penance is a twofold reality: both internal and external. The Lord condemned any form of penitence which is purely external. However, “true penitence cannot ever prescind from physical asceticism as well” because “mortification aims at the liberation of man who often finds himself chained to his own senses.”

Interesting enough is the pope’s idea that “beyond fast and abstinence the Church should seek for new expressions more suitable for the realization of the precise goal of penitence.” Could we fast from Internet or television and spend more time in prayer or with our family?

Three reasons for Christian penance
Penance is a vocation of the Church: because linked to Christ and His salvific action, all the members of the Church are called “to participate in the work of Christ and his expiation,” the pontiff notes. He adds, “Christ is the supreme model for those doing penance: he willed to suffer punishment for sins which were not His but those of others.” A Christian can no longer live for himself, but for Christ and also for his brethren completing “in his flesh that what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body, that is the Church.”

Penance is a need of the Church: “The Church, clasping sinners to its bosom, at once holy and always in need of purification, follows constantly the path of penance and renewal” (“Lumen Gentium,” 8). In the sacrament of penance, sinners become also “reconciled with the Church on which they have inflicted a wound by sinning, and the Church cooperates in their conversion with charity, example and prayer” (“Lumen Gentium,” 11).

A condition for authentic ecumenism: Paul VI quotes Vatican Council II as follows: “Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling. Undoubtedly, this explains the dynamism of the movement toward unity.”  “There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name without interior conversion” (“Decree on Ecumenism,” 6-7). Something to think about.

Practical examples of external acts of penance
Faithful acceptance of the burdens of everyday, persevering with faithfulness to the duties of one’s state of life, in the acceptance of the difficulties arising from one’s work and human coexistence.

Some voluntary acts. Apart from the traditional means (prayer, fasting and charity), “where economic well-being is greater, so much more will the witness of asceticism have to be given in order that the sons of the Church may not be involved in the spirit of the world,” wrote Paul VI. I would suggest that each one of us think about how much self-indulgence is present in our life and how we would grow in the spirit of self-denial.

However, Lent and penance is first of all a gift from God “to renew the family of the Church in spirit, to give us strength to purify our hearts, to control our desires and to serve God in freedom” (Preface II of Lent).  The ultimate goal of fasting is to help each one of us to make the complete gift of self to God.

Father Alvaro Montero, a Disciples of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary priest, is pastor of St. Mary Church in Littleton.