Friday after Ash Wednesday
February 16, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021624.cfm

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This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
releasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your wound shall quickly be healed;
Your vindication shall go before you,
and the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer,
you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!

Isaiah 58:6-9

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In today’s passage from Isaiah, we are given clear instructions about fasting – some forms of this practice matter more than others.

Depriving oneself of physical comforts is an ancient practice of penance. It is intended to make us more prayerfully aware of the dynamic of sin and grace in our lives. But obviously, it is a self-centered spiritual practice.

Our reading tells us that God desires an other-centered fasting – the practice of mercy toward our sisters and brothers. And Isaiah is clear about who those needy brethren are.

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy

In order to practice this mercy-centered fasting, there must be touch-points in our lives where we meet those in need. Today, we might examine our lives for our degree of insulation or isolation from society’s needy ones. We may isolate them by our attitudes, by our prejudices, by our physical distance, or perhaps just by our indifference.

Let’s ask ourselves today, “How might I reach out in prayer, service, and tenderness toward those who are in need of mercy?”

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Poetry: Fasting – translated from Rumi

There's hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Spirit. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus' table.

Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

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Music: Forty Days and Forty Nights

Forty days and forty nights
You were fasting in the wild;
Forty days and forty nights
Tempted, and yet undefiled.

Shall not we your sorrow share
And from worldly joys abstain,
Fasting with unceasing prayer,
Strong with you to suffer pain?

Then if Satan on us press,
Flesh or spirit to assail,
Victor in the wilderness,
Grant we may not faint nor fail!


So shall we have peace divine;
Holier gladness ours shall be;
Round us, too, shall angels shine,
Such as served You faithfully.


Keep, O keep us, Savior dear,
Ever constant by your side,
That with you we may appear
At th’eternal Eastertide