Reject “Almost!”

A Reflection on the Gospel of Mathew 9:14-15 – 16 February 2024

With fasting, we prepare our hearts to receive peace from the Lord, his greatest gift and the privileged sign of the coming of his Kingdom. (St John Paul II, Homily March 5, 2003)

     We read in the Gospel today,

The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus answered them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” (Matthew 9:14-15)

     As we enter the penitential season of Lent, the Gospel today is short, but instructive. The word, “penitence” comes from the Latin, “paene,” meaning “almost”. Lent is a season for the examination of our lives to determine what is lacking in our relationship with God and our neighbor. It is aimed at personal conversion, a re-turning of our hearts to our beloved bridegroom to close the gap of “almost”. It is not a passive waiting for God to act, but a passionate pursuit; “As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.” (Psalm 42:2)

     This pursuit of God is built upon three important paths: Prayer, Almsgiving, and Fasting.

Prayer: Lent is a season of building or rebuilding a more intensive prayer life. It is taking time to remove those distractions which deny the richness of the grace available in conversation with our Lord. It is removing, bit by bit, all that blocks our ability to lift up our hearts to the Lord and embrace both trials and joys in Him. With prayer, we abandon ourselves totally into God’s hands. From him alone we await true peace.

Almsgiving: Lent is a time to increase in the awareness of those who suffer from both physical and spiritual poverty and serving them as we would Christ. This giving of self is both just and necessary so that the light of Christ may blaze into a life shrouded in darkness. In bearing the light of Christ, we too, are enlightened.

Fasting: Lent is a season of fasting. It is a time of self-denial so that we may grow in our ability to reject all that tempts us away from an intense and undivided love of our Lord. Fasting produces in us a yearning for that which is absent, the “almost” in our relationship with Him. Spiritually, it intensifies our desire for Christ’s presence in our lives. It is on this fasting that today’s Gospel centers.

     In the Gospel, Jesus reminds us that when we are with Him physically, it is a time of intense joy and celebration, like being at a wedding feast. Our joy in Christ should be such that any separation from our beloved brings us sorrow, a yearning, a fasting. That is why we need to determine what is lacking and change! Think about the sorrow and yearning you had for the Eucharist when the Church shut its doors during COVID. Now recall the joy of receiving Him again. It was for me, a boundless joy. That fasting, which I hope we never ever repeat, created in so many an intense yearning to make up what was lacking, the “almost”. This yearning could only be satisfied in the intimate communion with our heavenly bridegroom.

     Fasting builds in us the strength to deny all that blocks the grace that the Lord constantly rains down upon us. Sometimes we hold tightly to umbrellas like pride, anger, lust, greed, and sloth which deny us complete joy. We are dissatisfied. With each grumble of the stomach, we should sense the yearning for the heavenly wedding feast of the Lamb and a strengthening in our determination to arrive with our baptismal wedding garment, washed in the blood of the Lamb, unspotted by sin. Fasting produces in us a determination to die to self, such that nothing ever comes between us and He whom we love, the “almost”.

     Fast! Now is a very acceptable time for making an authentic conversion, a resolve to make up what is “almost” in our love. Fast! Rend your hearts and not your garments so that we may return purified to the Father of all. Our garment can’t be just “almost” clean. Fast! Reject all that blocks grace and be filled with the presence of the Lord who is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Joel 2:13 NABRE). Reject the “almost!”

End notes:

Bradley, F. J. (2011, October 25). IMG_1902. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesbradley/6279811709

John Paul II. Homilies of Pope John Paul II (English). Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2014. Print.