In purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything. 2 Corinthians 6:6-10
“Such exercises as fasting cannot have their proper effect unless our motives for practicing them spring from personal mediation. We have to think what we are doing, and the reason for our action must spring from the depths of our freedom and be enlivened by the transforming power of Christian love. Otherwise, our self-imposed sacrifices are likely to be pretenses, symbolic gestures without real meaning. Sacrifices made in this fashion would be better left unmade.”
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in Contemplative Prayer (New York: Image Books, 1969) 52.
The Apostle Paul lived with intentionality. His focus, and that of his colleagues, was enduring anything in order to minister to others with love empowered by the Holy Spirit. Merton, and the rest of us much later, have to “think what we are doing” in order to do things for the right reasons. Fasting is one of those things.
Saying “NO” to something to say “YES” to other things wins no favor before God. It’s a waste of time and energy. So what should we do? Lent is about learning to say “NO” to the flesh so we can say “YES” to the Spirit. When we do, the transforming power of God works in us and “having nothing, and yet possessing everything” God makes us into generous conduits of His love.