March 12, 2025
More than 1,600 years ago, John Chrysostom, an Early Church Father, lived as a hermit in a mountain cave near Antioch. He ate little and seldom slept. Those years of self-denial gave him a deep spiritual understanding of Lent, about which he said: “No matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.”
In describing Lent, the Congregation for Divine Worship says: “It is a time to hear the Word of God, to convert, to prepare for and remember Baptism, to be reconciled with God and one’s neighbor, and of more frequent recourse to the ‘arms of Christian penance’: prayer, fasting and almsgiving.”
That’s quite an order. Fortunately, there are 40 days to strive toward those goals, which are known as the “Three Eminent Good Works” and rank above all others because they are especially pleasing to God. In prayer, we give God our hearts and souls and return his love with our love. Fasting offers him our bodies, with their senses and abilities. And in almsgiving, we use our earthly possessions for God’s honor and glory.
St. John Henry Newman, who was immersed in 19th century English society and academia, still understood what it meant to take up your cross and follow Christ. He knew that actions speak louder than words.
In one of his Lenten sermons on self-denial, Newman said: “How are you to know you are in earnest? Make some sacrifice, do some distasteful thing which you are not actually obliged to do (so long as it is lawful) to bring home to your mind that in fact you do love your Savior, that you do hate sin, that you do hate your sinful nature, that you have put aside the present world. Thus you will have evidence that you are not using mere words. It is easy to make professions, easy to say fine things in speech or in writing, easy to astonish men with truths which they do not know and sentiments which rise above human nature…Let not your words run on. Try yourself daily in little deeds to prove that your faith is more than a deceit.”
You will see the same result in your grief. If you help another, make a sacrifice for someone who is also hurting, make an effort to forgive, and offer a sympathetic ear to a suffering person, it will help you in your healing.
©J Pisani
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