Why we pray, fast and give alms

 

Fr. Louis Bouyer

Most of us know the "drill" for Lent: pray, fast, give alms.

But here's a reflection by French priest and writer Fr. Louis Bouyer on why we fast and what spiritual good it does.

The gist is that it leads us to deeper life in Christ and to eternal life.

This appeared in the current Magnificat devotional magazine, and is from a book entitled Christian Initiation, Michael Hentz, ed. 2018, Cluny media.

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Christian asceticism never aims at annihilating life in us; on the contrary its purpose is to liberate it. It does not imply any kind of condemnation of the things which it gives up, but simply an absolute preference for the one thing necessary (Lk 10:42)…. [The Christian mortifies himself] always to gain more life. Even when the moment arrives for him to complete his Eucharist, like the martyrs, by offering his own death joined to that of Jesus, he will do it joyfully because he will do it with resurrection in mind.

What all asceticism aims at is the destruction of the obsessive concentration on self caused by sin. It aims at letting us be seized, invaded, and carried away by the generosity of God’s life, the life which is love…. It is the conflict between this love and the tendency in all of us which has caused our own flesh, and the world with us, to curve inwards, as it were. It is this tendency, that is, sin, that brought death into the world and all the pangs leading up to it. But God only allowed his work to be damaged like this because he knew how to find the remedy….

Asceticism in all its forms has therefore no other purpose but that of leading us to abandon ourselves in everything through faith to the love of God…. It only seems to break us in order to raise us up and open our hearts…. In everything the Christian life will be marked by a continually expanding rhythm, that moves from ever renewed discoveries to ever deeper renunciations…. When in one sense the Christian no longer has anything, in another he has everything. But as long as he remains on earth, everything must continually be given up again, only to be found once more. The process must go on until we are ready for the total and definitive abandonment of death, that is, for the fullness of the resurrection.