Lent Station Masses
St. Charles, Paisley.  Week One, Monday
 
Dear brothers and sisters, it is a joy to be with you as we make our way in our Lenten journey into Easter. 
 
In our fist Station Mass in the Trinity Cluster we reflected on how the Liturgy of this season sees Lent as a grace to us from God, so that our time of waiting for the Easter feast can be filled with interior joy.  And it is a joy we feel inside as we notice that Lenten grace purifying our minds from the clutter of life and light up in us a fresh desire for prayer and eagerness for works of charity. In the season of Lent we are reborn, Church and disciples, as real sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father.
 
The Scriptures remind the whole community of the challenge of Lent to: Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.   And the Lord points us to the sure guide us on our path to holiness which are the Commandments He gave us.  The Ten Commandments are not at all some remnant of a bygone age with no use in our modern world. It is still the case that it is not good to steal, or be deceitful or a fraud; not good to take advantage of the disabled, blind, deaf or whatever; not good, if you are a judge in any cause, to side with the baying crowd for the sake of an easy life; not good to slander your neighbour or gossip about her behind her back.  We will avoid these things if we respect God and give Him His place in our lives and our world.
 
We are holy only by God’s grace but he wants us to do our bit and cooperate with Him.  And for this God arms us with our Christian spirituality to make us ready to fight the good fight.  And this Christians spirituality, given to us in Revelation by God our Teacher is a spirituality of prayer and fasting and almsgiving.  This is the triple corded rope by which God lifts us up from the pit of sin and into the daylight of His presence.  In our own times we have forgotten about the idea of the triple cord.  How often do we hear it said that Lent is not about giving up but about giving, not about fasting but only about charity?  How often do we hear the advice just to choose one out of the three and to opt for praying, or giving up, or doing charity?  In those times we do well to remember the wise image Saint Augustine left us.  He thought of our efforts to pray to God as being like a bird trying to fly into the sky.  But just as the bird needs real wings so our prayer needs spiritual wings without which it is stuck on the ground and never reaches God.  And Augustine identified the two wings of prayer as fasting and almsgiving.  That is why the Preface of today’s Mass rightly reminds us of the necessity of bodily fasting through which the Lord helps us raise up our minds to Him, and by means of which He bestows on us virtue through Christ our lord.
 
Of course our Christian lives must always have a place for almsgiving and we will reflect on this in tomorrow’s catechesis.  In today’s Gospel Jesus gives a decisive role to charity as the criterion of our salvation and share in His Kingdom.  The Lord advises us we will be saved or lost eternally depending on how much we denied ourselves and took care of the needy.  We will be saved or lost depending upon whether or not we found Him and served Him in the hungry and thirsty all around us, in the immigrant and the homeless, the sick and imprisoned.  In so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.  In so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.” 
 
But how are we going to see beyond ourselves and our selfish desires so as to really open our eyes to those in need?   It is only by fasting and the self-denial that humbles us, that moderates our self-centredness and that overcomes our slavery to the flesh that we find the necessary freedom to serve the Lord’s poor. 
 
This season is a season of penance, and fasting is penance that brings about conversion.  That is why the Scriptures and the Saints of the Church insist on the triple cord, the two-winged bird, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, as the only means of continual conversion away from ourselves and into God and or neighbour.
 
Finally, one rule of Christian fasting always to remember, which is that fasting should be humble, with no thought of human glory or boasting.  So, it is not about the heroism of bread and water or cold showers for forty days. That is impressive.  But much better   the small, insignificant things like taking a little less of what you like, giving up the piece of chocolate when your finger has just reached out to it.  It is when you hear a voice inside of you saying, ‘This will make no difference at all because it is too small’ that you know you heard the temptation of the Devil.  It is fasts that are truly insignificant that are hardest to humble ourselves before but they really do matter most in the sight of God. Remember He sees every little thing we give up and He is able to multiply it one hundredfold in blessings.
 
We turn to Our Lady, the Seat of Wisdom, Who teaches us the way of the Lord.  She knew what it was to fast and how the Lord fills the hungry with good things.  Let us ask Her to show us how to hunger for righteousness so that the Lord remembers His mercy and glorifies Himself in our souls.