Message from Fr. Darling

During Lent we practice our three disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. We practice them for six weeks so that practice will make them perfect. The second of these disciplines on which we reflect is fasting.

We hear in the media that we have a crisis in our country due to the fact that so many of our younger members are overweight. Of course that problem is laid at the feet of McDonald’s. They decided to corrupt our youth when they made Big Mac’s and Quarter Pounders, and french fries taste as good as they do. They plotted to make their food addicting such that you can’t just eat one, or so that is where we want to place the blame instead of taking the responsibility for our own actions. Other than my parents forcing me to take medicine when I was sick as a child I can’t recall anyone forcing me to swallow anything I didn’t choose to consume. That is why during Lent we practice fasting. As good as any food might be if we are eating it for the pleasure of the taste or the experience around the Thanksgiving table of fighting over the last drumstick, or for whatever reason other than nutrition then we are doing ourselves possible harm. For one person the problem might be food whereas for another it might be possessions of some kind, buying more that we don’t need because we find our self worth in stuff, excessive drinking, sexual promiscuity, numbing ourselves with drugs of some kind, the number of Facebook or Twitter followers we have, our phones that run our lives, etc. None of these things are bad in themselves— however when they become the masters and we become the servants then we say that things have become disordered, i.e., not the way that they should be. So during Lent we fast. We take whatever that good thing is and we push it away for a bit such that we can get control over it instead of it having control over us. It is not that the thing is bad in and of itself but rather that things become bad for us when we give control of our lives over to that stuff instead of giving control of our lives over to God. Once we get the proper use correct then those things become blessings to us instead of curses. Hence we practice fasting during Lent to help us do such.