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Saturday morning before August 29, 2010: The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

It’s been a full month now since June and I have moved from Richmond, Kentuckey, to Barnesville, Georgia.  And we’re still unpacking.  Although the big things have been unboxed and are settled somewhere in our new home, we’re still unwrapping pictures and paintings; we’re still trying to find out what happened to the small odds and ends.  My ten-pounds vice for the workshop table, for example.

Students on the campus of Gordon College

Then too I managed to find myself a job.  Having retired from university teaching as a full professor in 2006, I ambled a month ago into the local college Department of Humanities and am now an adjunct professor (a part-timer on the bottom rung of the academic teaching ladder), showing up in three classes to teach freshman composition and Early American Literature at Gordon College, just a mile from our new home.

Then too a new companion, Mitzy, has entered my life.  Weighing forty-five pounds, she’s carmel-colored, wears a white scarf about her neck, runs with a white-tipped tail, and loves to chase a raw-hide bone during her morning, midday, and evening walks.  She also smells a bit skunkish lately, having chased Disney’s “Flower” a bit too closely across the nearby soccer field, winding up befumed.  Her visit to the vet yesterday went well: no fleas, no heartworms, just excellent health. More about her in forthcoming posts.

The above comes your way simply to say that I’m not entirely lazying around here in B’ville.  Sometimes it’s been necessary for me to climb out of bed at three in the morning to make sure that I can teach the poetry of Anne Bradstreet well.  I quite sure, however, that as my routine becomes more regular and as all the framed photographs are hung, that my blog time will once again open itself up, and I’ll be able to post more often, regularly.

 I write all of this in response to several phone calls that I enjoyed because, among the details of chatting, several have asked when I will get back to this blog.  Apparently they like to read now and again some of what gets posted. So to those who have asked, “When again?”, I say, “Now.”  And thanks for reminding me that what goes on here is important too.

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About the past two weeks

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

About two weeks ago my wife and I drove up from Georgia to Kentucky;  since arriving here I found it helpful not to do much writing, just enough to fill out a grocery list, a list of disciplines that I need to strive for during Lent, perhaps a letter or two, and the barest of email postings.  In lieu of writing sentences, I’ve been reading them, especially those in these four books:  The Cambridge Companion of Orthodox Christian Theology, Vladimir Lossky’s The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, and Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God (especially Chapter 4 on ”Silence”).   Slowly, but what seems surely, I’m seeing more clearly what Eastern Orthodoxy is about, especially as it differs from our Western theological heritage; and, as I told my friend Harry this morning over coffee at Hardy’s, I find much of Orthodoxy more theologically and spiritually satisfying than what has been given to me in the Western church.  On a napkin this morning, I drew out (in an admittedly crude fashion diagrammatically) a rough sketch of Orthodoxy’s understanding of the Incarnation, quite wonderful in articulating the Biblical announcement of God’s enfleshment and our subsequent theosis. 

Years ago it was the pratice among some Lutheran churches to confess The Athanasian Creed on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, and I can remember always being profoundly unable (and in a larger sense I still am) to understand what the Creed asked me to confess when I said the following:

Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation; that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Essence of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Essence of his Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God.

By the assumption of the Manhood into God.  This week I have come to more than simply an inkling as to what Athanasius and the Cappadotian Fathers were urging Christians in the Church to embrace in order to preserve and treasure rightly the fullest Presence of God in Christ and the Holy Spirit among and within us.   I now see that such an understanding can be appreciated best (some would say only) by those Christians and churches who understand the Gospel sacramentally in the strongest sense of that adverb.  Fortunately for me the Lutheran Church as I have lived within it has been profoundly sacramental (if not always orthodox in its articulation of the Incarnation).   Why it has taken me so long, now near the completion of my life, to be within my present understanding and enjoyment of the Incarnation, I don’t know.  Much has to do with the wayward life I have led.  All I know now is that I am grateful for the vibrant witness of the Orthodox Church and daily ask God to bless her as she witnesses to those like me outside her ecclesial embrace.

If any among my readers is an Orthodox Christian, I would deeply appreciate hearing from you.  Perhaps you might help me further my understanding of the Incarnation, my veneration of the Theotokos, my immersion in the Scriptures, my deeping appreciation and participation in apophatic prayer, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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Praying before praying

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Marc Chagall, The Praying Jew

Now that June is away for the week with her daughter and friends, I am at the lakehouse by myself until Saturday.  There are certain pleasures and blessings in being alone for a while, and even more of them when the solitude is extended.   Retired and in the house by myself, I have the privilege of planning my own days; and as a consequence I’m able to experiment somewhat with what goes on in my prayer life.   Having established a daily round of “fixed-time” Morning and Evening Prayer for many years now, I’m able to try some adjustments that may be for the better.

On most days my wife and I do our “fixed-time” praying at 8 in the morning and 5 in the evening.  Most of the time we simply drop whatever we’re doing, sit down, open up our prayerbooks, and, as we sometimes say, “go to it.”  What we really mean, of course, is that we want to “go to God.”   Our going usually takes about twenty minutes (a little more in the evening when we make our intercessions), and then we return to whatever else we need to do.   Daily prayer is thus something of an twice-daily interruption, two short openings in the day.

When I’m alone, however, I’m finding that my sense of “fixed-time” praying is under expansion so that more of each day is now opening up to “going to God.”  One addition to my habit of prayer is especially proving helpful, and I like to share how it is that I came upon it.

On a Friday two weeks ago a group from St. John Lutheran Church and I spent the evening at B’nai Israel synagogue in Fayetteville, Georgia, joining our Reformed Jewish brothers and sisters in their Sabbath worship.  Using their service book, Gates of Prayer, I mumbled my way through transliterations of Hebrew, listened to a good talk by the rabbi, and managed, at least a little bit, to acquaint myself with a spattering of Jewish prayer life.  As I opened Gates of Prayer, I found this sentence on page 3:

The pious ones of old used to wait a whole hour before praying, the better to concentrate their minds on God.

Reading that sentence took me back a bit!  Instead of dropping everything and jumping into prayer, the “pious ones” apparently spent considerable prayer time preparing for prayer.  Since reading that observation, I’ve tried to put its suggestion into practice by slightly changing how I begin evening and morning prayers now that I’m alone at the lakehouse. 

Here’s how it is working for me.  Instead of turning off the TV or coming in from some outside chore and entering prayer a few seconds later, I’m now deliberately settling into prayer with more preparatory silence.   First, I light the votive candle before icons of the Lord Jesus and His Mother.   Then I sit down and carefully preview what I’ll read in my prayer book and place my book marks accordingly so that I won’t need to fumble around later on.  I check my church calendar to make sure that I’m not overlooking something or someone special to the day.   Next I turn the day’s pages and find out what psalms and lessons are appointed for the day so as to alert myself as to reading surprises I may encounter.   Next I see what hymn is to be sung (or chose one), and if I don’t know the tune, I take the time to finger a nearby keyboard, learning the melody if that’s necessary.  All of this I do slowly.  I’m in no rush. 

I then look over my list of names of people who have asked for intercessions.  Now and then I’ll pencil in an additional name that comes to mind.  With my list updated, I then begin to review my own life for several minutes.  If I’m in Morning Prayer, I reflect upon what happened since yesterday’s Evening Prayer.  Did I do or not do anything that needs to be brought before God.  In the evening I review the whole day, examining personal motives, examining my conscious, noting especially where repentance is required and necessary.  I make a mental list of thanksgivings and praises I want to offer to God.   Once in a while I’ll look over my daily planner’s “to do” list to see if something was left undone that may need immediate attention during and after prayer.

What used to be about twenty minutes or so of “fixed-hour” praying is now turning out to take about twice as long.   Everything is slowly down.  I find myself more relaxed, centered, and settled.  It’s certainly not “a whole hour before praying,” but it is way of coming before God with more awareness and attention.  Perhaps it’s close to what the pious ones meant when they recommended praying before praying.

In Gates of Prayer, there’s this little story, also on page 3:

The REBBE [rabbi] of Tsanz was asked by a Chasid [Hasidic friend], “What does the Rabbi do before praying?”  “I pray,” was the reply, “that I may be able to pray properly.”

Two Fridays ago in their synagogue, God showed me how He can help me in my prayer life, and I learned a lot from my Jewish friends.  This week I’m beginning to realize that some time spent praying before praying helps my prayer life.

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29 January 2010: House cleaning in God’s presence

Friday, January 29th, 2010

cleaning houseToday while June has driven down to Macon to see about a recall regarding her Lexus (which she inherited from her brother Harold several years ago) from the Toyota corporation regarding something to do with an oil hose, I’m staying at home, having decided to do a bit of pre-spring house cleaning:  scrubbing the bathroom floors, cleaning spots out of the carpets with a pan of vinegar-water, pouring some Drano into a drain that should be taught to work better, washing a load or two of clothes, vacuuming the house, and straightening up my study.  All of this, quite frankly, in preparation for my stay-at-home next week while June goes on a cruise and her daughter and friends.  As you might imagine, I like a clean house, everything in its place, and a place for everything–as the cliche goes.

It’s on days like this that I like to remember Brother Lawrence who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God.  Brother Lawrence is famous for his recommendations to be constant in prayer even while doing chores around the kitchen.  As a seventeenth-century French monk, Brother Lawrence developed a way of praying with awareness which some say is closely allied to the kind of attention practiced of by our brothers and sisters who train themselves in mindfulness meditation.   For example, in The Practice of the Presence of God, he wrote:  “Lift up your heart to Him, sometimes even at your meals, and when you are in company; the least little remembrance will always be acceptable to Him. You need not cry very loud; he is nearer to us than we are aware of.”    Brother Lawrence was intensely aware that he was in constant need of grace, and much of praying was given to frequent repentance.   So with me.   Today I find myself far less devoted to God, my wife, friends and family that I wish.  Like Brother Lawrence I too am in need of grace, repentance, and forgiveness.   May God have mercy on me, and may He empty Himself into me even as I empty myself so I can be filled with His Spirit.   Renew my intensions, O Lord, so that this day I live with all my heart, soul, and mind given to You.  May God help me to love others, especially those whom I find irritating and irksome, while I take out the trash, get some laundry done, blow more pine needles off the deck, and drive the truck to the Monticello landfill where I take two old, wornout tires that need to be recycled.

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From my daybook, 12-16 January 2010

Saturday, January 16th, 2010
Days of unspeakable tragedy, sorrow, heartache. The first news of the earthquake in Haiti came, not from TV, but via email sent by Debbie Berquist from the Village of Hope in Port au Prince:

Jan 12, 2010 – 6:03pm WE ARE ALL FINE….shook up in more ways than one as you can well imagine. A few MINOR bruises. It is 5:40 PM as we type this and we are still having a few after shocks…the room shakes as I type. All the Haitian staff at Hope House are fine as well. My Haiti phones are out. Some of the team members (from PA) have been able to contact their families.

Since that message, many more, some almost hourly. Marie Major is all right as are all her children at Grace Orphanage; the kids at The Little Children of Jesus Orphanage are okay. A fragment of a phone call from Johnson tells us that Johnson and Andronic are alive; there is no word yet about Stevenson. We fearful that he may not be alive. My talk to the parish on Sunday bears fruit with money being collected, many prayers offered, and SJLC fully aware of the disaster. Received word today that Thrivent is matching funds given for relief: $1 for every $2 donated. In touch with Luckey, Pat, and Sherri; all of us are convinced that our scheduled February 1 trip to Port au Prince is on indefinite hold.

On Wednesday I met with Larry Schultz on the Global Missions Committee at the Manhattan Restaurant; Larry comes from good stock, open and honest. That evening the Eucharist was clean and simple, always Christ. Becky and Wayne came over for supper on Thursday. Met Hugh in the Barnesville post office and afterward he helped me get the plywood over to his place. We got the boat covered with a huge tarp.

Importantly, am learning to do the Jesus Prayer with regularity, each morning about 6. The darkness is important. 100 slow knots and prostations. Two chokti arrived as did the votive candle for the icon shelf. Learning how to include the saints in my prayers, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. Clearly more Orthodox. Jim Forest’s book a big help, especially the collection of prayers.

Good movie: Under the Sun with subscripts. Tomorrow’s Gospel, the wedding at Cana. Dan Clendenin says it well:

At Cana in Galilee Jesus filled and fulfilled the ancient promises of Judaism. He filled the empty pots used for ritual purity with wine used for secular celebration. He didn’t merely announce a coming reign of God, or direct attention away from himself to some other. With the first of his “many miraculous signs” he demonstrated that somehow and in some unsurpassed manner he revealed the glory and character of God like no other. This friend of sinners, accused of being a glutton and drunkard, revealed a God of extravagant goodness and mercy.

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Spiritual Subtraction

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

shovelingIn The Silence of Unknowing: The Key to the Spiritual Life (Triumph, Missouri: Liquori, 1989), Terence Grant clarifies what it means to imitate Christ:

The German mystic Meister Eckhart taught that spirituality is a matter of subtraction, not addition.   True holiness, true emulation of holy people, involves our dropping the need to be somebody greater than we are . . . .  What about Saint Paul’s instruction that we imitate him as he imitates Christ?   How are we to ‘imitate Christ’?   I think that Paul gives us the answer to this question in what is perhaps his most powerful description of Christ: 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, 
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.  
(Phillipians 2:5-8; emphasis added).
 
Jesus didn’t try to become anybody important.  In fact, he relinquished any such claim.  He emptied himself.  We imitate Jesus by our emptying of self, not by adding on ideals and standards, nor by trying to copy the lives of great people.  To follow Christ is to abandon our desire to become.”  (20-21)

In directing us to Meister Eckhart’s “matter of substraction,” Grant reminds us that we who wish to imitate Christ, must work constantly and continually at a chipping away of pride.   To become humble, to practice humility takes time and patience, a slow chipping away at pride until it is gone.  

Several friends have recently been discussing this “matter of subtraction” among themselves.  “We are a mountain of pride,” says one, “and we must dig with the shovel of humility, and remove our pride slowly. As we reduce (more…)

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The Day Alone: Solitude and Silence (continued)

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

contemplative_outreachToday I’m posting a third quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, Chapter Three, “The Day Alone.”   Perhaps a little background about this posting might prove helpful.   Life Together is considered a classic, well worth serious reading, among those who read about Christian spirituality.  I have read it many times.   During the past few weeks, I decided to read it once  more very slowly as a “sacred text,”  pages made exceptionally valuable by way of lectio divina.     This way of reading requires I slow down so that I read only a paragraph or two at most, concentrating on one  idea, perhaps one image, perhaps one word, so that during the day I can return to the idea, image, word, or phrase many times during the day.  By reading slowly and letting the Holy Spirit impress me something foregrounded—a word, image, phrase, idea—I ‘m given the privilege of “chewing” (like a cow, some say)  over and over a single, sacred, and sacramental ”something” so that I can turn it over, sense its implications, digest it, taste it, and so take a good deep look at its meaning for my life. 

Already I done such reading with the earlier two chapters in Life Together: Chapter I, Community; Chapter II, “The Day with Others.”   At the end of last week I began reading and sharing with you Chapter III, “The Day Alone.”   Today I’m reading the following two paragraphs and will be chewing the following words in my cud throughout the day.  Perhaps you’d like to chew with me.

Along with the day of the Christian family fellowship together there goes the lonely day of the individual.  This is as it should  be.  The day together will be unfruitful without the day alone, both for the fellowship and for the individual.

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community.  Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community.  One does not exist without the other.  Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.  (78)

Bonhoeffer’s insight into the relationship between solitude and community is an exceptionally good one.   As I reflect on its application in my life, I have come to realize that I simply cannot live a balanced and fully spiritual life in Christ without entering silence and community in almost equal proportions.  It’s for this reason that I try hard to wake up early, often around 4:30 or 5:00, in order to sit outside (if possible) and enter contemplative prayer for an extended period of time.  And in the evening, whenever possible (sometimes it  just isn’t), I again set aside a chair for myself in an empty room and, sitting  comfortably and closing my eyes, allow myself to reduce all anxieties, worries, and thoughts about myself so that I may be fully in the presence of the Most Holy Other, the Beloved.  Practicing Centering  Prayer in the morning and evening, twice daily, is now for me as necessary as breathing and eating, sleeping and walking, reading and writing, working and resting.  I pray that it may be so for you too.

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The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

st anthony of egypt

As many of you already know, I have found the sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers insightful, provocative in the best sense of that word, and a source of great comfort and encouragement as I try to understand and live a Christian life.   Having read in and around the collection of their stories and advice in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (trans. Benedicta Ward) almost 0n a daily basis, I’d like to encourage everyone interested in developing a mature Christian faith and life to become acquainted with the witness to our Desert Elders.  In addition to the basic collection of their sayings, I have found the following books notably helpful inasmuch as they provide valuable contextual “saying-by-saying” commentary:

To give you some sense of what you might find in The Sayings and the commentaries on them, I’d like to quote what John Chryssagavgis says in Chapter Eighteen, “Encountering God,” in his In the Heart of the Desert.  After sharing with us two insights important insights that the Desert Elders may give us as we encounter God, Chryssagavgis provides this third insight:

Third, and finally, there is another lesson about encountering God that may be gleaned from the teaching of these elders in the desert of early Egypt.  In the struggle–in the very place where we meet God, and where we are loved by God–we too discover how to love others.  It is in the struggle itself that we discern ways of embracing the weaknesses of others, and learn how to be compassionate, like God.  We understand that we are like others not primarily in our virtues and our strengths, but especially in our faults and our flaws.  In the desert, the call to perfection is received as an invitation to love; it percetived in the light of Christ’s injunction: “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6.36).  That is why [and here Chryssavagis give us three stories]:

Like a god upon this earth, Abba Macarius would cover the faults of others, which he saw, as though he did not see them; and those which he heard, as t hough he did not hear them.

A brother, who had sinned, was turned out of the church by the priest.  Abba Bessarion got up and went out with him, saying:  “I too am a sinner.”

One day Abba Isaac sent to a monastery.  He saw a brother committiong a sin and condemned him.  When returned to the desert, an angel of the Lord came and stood in front of the door of his cell, and said:  “I will not let you enter.” But he persisted saying, “What is the matter?”  The angel replied:  “God has sent me to ask you where you want to throw the guilty brother whom you have condemned.”  Immediately Abba Isaac repented and said, “I have sinned; forgive me.”  Then the angel said:  “Get up, God has forgiven you.  But from now on, be careful not to judge someone before God has done so.”

I don’t know about you, but I am frequently guilty of judging others without remembering that I too am a sinning fellow-travelor with all my human brothers and sisters.   For example, I find it quite easy to judge others whose religious life–especially when it comes to praying and worshipping–is not quite like mine (be they Lutherans, Southern Baptists, or Adventists);  when I observe what goes on in parishes other than my own, I find myself making comparisons, comparisons that result in my looking down or askance on someone (maybe even a pastor!) who doesn’t behave or preach as I think appropriate.   It’s then that I listen again to this story:

Some of the elders came to visit Abba Poemen and asked him:  “When we see brothers who are falling asleep during the services, should we arouse them so that they will be watchful?”   Poemen said to them in response:  “For my part, when I see a brother falling asleep, I place his head on my knees and let him rest.”

Surely that little story has much to teach us as to how we might love others more fully, especially when we perceive ourselves a bit (or a lot!) better than they.   It’s stories like this one (and there are hundreds of them) that have made me read, study, and appreciate our Desert Elders.   They are good mentors in the Faith.  Perhaps you too will come to know and love them.

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St. Andrew’s Day

Friday, November 27th, 2009

st andrewNext Monday is my favorite saint’s day.  After all, it’s St. Andrew’s Day!  You shouldn’t get the idea, however, that I was intentionally named after him (although  in the long view of things, I like to think so).  The story goes that during the Great Depression (yes, I’m that old) my father was unable to render due payment to my mother’s obstetrician, Dr. Harvey Andrew Stein, for the services he provided during my delivery and birth into the God’s world.  With little or no money in hand, my father decided to honor (or pay!) the Dr. Stein, one of the finest Jewish obstetricians in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, by naming me after Dr. Stein.   So on my birth certificate, the nurse penned in my full name as Harvey Andrew Stein.  For whatever reasons (and I’m glad somebody decided to do so), the first name never stuck, and nobody ever called me Harvey.  To this day, I don’t use it ever and have always managed, when necessary to do something legal, to sign my Hancock as “H. Andrew Harnack.” 

Be that as it may, I know I was baptized as Harvey Andrew Harnack on St. Andrew’s Day, and consequently (as I said, “in the long run”),  St. Andrew is and has been for 72 years my patron saint.   His icon now hangs in my study by the door so that I get to look at him many times during the day.  Although the icon itself displays St. Andrew as a rather dour-looking fellow (I am, of course, dour at times myself), I like to look at the icon appreciatively for at least two reasons.  First, it was to Andrew that Jesus said clearly, “You did not choose me; I chose you!”   And second, in Scripture it is St. Andrew who likes to introduce people to Jesus.  He is, after all, the disciple who introduced the first Pope to Jesus.   All of this reminds me that I am Andy only by the grace of God and that one of my jobs is to introduce as many people to Jesus as I possibly can.

So on this day, give thanks with me for my Holy Baptism into the life of the Most Holy Trinity and the Church created, sustained, and nourished by the grace of the Father through the gift of His son and the presence of the Holy Spirit.  And as often as possible, ask God to let me use my life and Praying Daily Blog as an introduction and invitation to resurrection with Jesus, our Lord.

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A Prayer by the Lake

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

June and I drove down to our lakehouse in Georgia on Thursday, and yesterday she, along with twenty or so of her Bible-class friends, headed up to the mountains of northern Georgia, for a weekend retreat.  That leaves me here by myself.   After a somewhat sleepless night, I awoke this morning, did Prayers, and have since decided that I would do imagesthe day with a fast.  Quite frankly, I’m not very good at fasting, and so it was with some considerable welcome that, when listening to Ancient Faith Radio, I heard a prayer by Nikolai VelimirovichSt. Nikolai Velimirovich.   It was from a collection of his prayers published in Prayers by the Lake, available online.   Unacquainted with St. Nikolai Velimirovich, I began rummaging around his prayers and found this one, designed providentailly for me on this Saturday:

Prayers by the Lake – XLI

With fasting I gladden my hope in You, my Lord, Who are to come again.

Fasting hastens my preparation for Your coming, the sole expectation of my days and nights.

Fasting makes my body thinner, so that what remains can more easily shine with the spirit.

While waiting for You, I wish neither to nourish myself with blood nor to take life–so that the animals may sense the joy of my expectation.

But truly, abstaining from food will not save me. Even if I were to eat only the sand from the lake, You would not come to me, unless the fasting penetrated deeper into my soul.

I have come to know through my prayer, that bodily fasting is more a symbol of true fasting, very beneficial for someone who has only just begun to hope in You, and nevertheless very difficult for someone who merely practices it.

Therefore I have brought fasting into my soul to purge her of many impudent fiancé’s and to prepare her for You like a virgin.

And I have brought fasting into my mind, to expel from it all daydreams about worldly matters and to demolish all the air castles, fabricated from those daydreams. 

I have brought fasting into my mind, so that it might jettison the world and prepare to receive Your Wisdom.

And I have brought fasting into my heart, so that by means of it my heart might quell all passions and worldly selfishness.

I have brought fasting into my heart, so that heavenly peace might ineffably reign over my heart, when Your stormy Spirit encounters it.

I prescribe fasting for my tongue, to break itself of the habit of idle chatter and to speak reservedly only those words that clear the way for You to come.

And I have imposed fasting on my worries so that it may blow them all away before itself like the wind that blows away the mist, lest they stand like dense fog between me and You, and lest they turn my gaze back to the world.

And fasting has brought into my soul tranquility in the face of uncreated and created realms, and humility towards men and creatures. And it has instilled in me courage, the likes of which I never knew when I was armed with every sort of worldly weapon. 

What was my hope before I began to fast except merely another story told by others, which passed from mouth to mouth?

The story told by others about salvation through prayer and fasting became my own.

False fasting accompanies false hope, just as no fasting accompanies hopelessness.

But just as a wheel follows behind a wheel, so true fasting follows true hope.

Help me to fast joyfully and to hope joyously, for You, my Most Joyful Feast, are drawing near to me with Your radiant smile.

While I realize that Jesus tells us not to announce our fastings with fanfare (we should rather put some oil on our faces and avoid sanctimoneous self-attention), I think it’s okay in this posting to talk about fasting generally and use whatever resources the Church gives us to take seriously our Lord’s injunction that we ought fast a fairly regular habit, a habit to be practiced as regularly as prayer (Matthew 6.5-18).   Certainly Christians in previous generations have found fasting helpful in the formation of their interior lives.   Francis of Assisi was a faster, as was Luther, Calvin, and Knox.  John Wesley  followed the example of the disciples in fasting twice a week.  In Haiti my friend Honore Roger fasts twice a week so that he can give some of his food to his more poor neighbors.   Roger understands the saying: “If you have a full stomach, it is not likely that you think of those who are hungry.” 

So why do I want to fast on this Saturday while my wife is on a retreat with her friends?  Mostly it’s so I cIMG_1157-cropped_resizedan spiritually be a friend with Honore Roger, so that in some small way I can understand what it’s like to be hungry, so that God can bend my thinking and spirit toward those who live in poverty.   Such poverty may express itself in many ways: many simply live in a country like Haiti and are poor by default; some are poor because they have no friends, others are poor and live without a love for life, still others are financially impoverished, perhaps in overwhelming debt, living without employment, or sick and without health insurance.   It may be that today that God will introduce me to some of these people.  It may be that a day of not eating as usual will help me, as a disciple of Jesus, to help those who are poor as they come to me or as I happen to meet them.

For more information about Christian fasting, visit the following:

Your Personal Guide to Fasting and Prayer
Global Fast / Food for the Poor
Christian Fasting: A Theological Approach

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