Lenten Practices and Relationships
One way to understand our three Lenten practices: Prayer, Almsgiving, and Fasting, is through
the lens of relationships. We can see it as a way in which we slowly become more loving in
three aspects.
Through Prayer, we try to refocus on our relationship with God. Through almsgiving, we improve
our relationships with those around us. Almsgiving helps us sensitize our hearts to the needs of
those around us, especially those who are most forgotten.
How is fasting a loving thing then? I think fasting helps us heal our relationship with ourselves.
We are often living in automatic, responding to the latest impulse that comes our way.
Sometimes it comes from screens: call it TV, cell phones, or computers, sometimes these
impulses come from our family or co-workers: a perceived underappreciation, a perceived slight.
We can go through life responding to these impulses. However, when we fast, we realize one
very important element to our inner life. Our capacity to CHOOSE. I can choose not to eat that
piece of meat. I can choose not to eat a full meal on Ash Wednesday. This communal practice
reminds us all that we ARE free, we ARE capable of putting down the phone and going for a
walk instead, or going to bed earlier. This is a healing and loving gesture towards ourselves.
Fr. Pepe Ruiz, S.J.