Wax on, wax off

Matthew 9:10-17

         I have this image in my head of Mr. Myagi saying, wax on, wax off. It seemed torturous for the kid but it showed him the moves and gave him something very important as well, discipline. Not the ruler on the knuckles discipline but a discipline to stick with something, learn and obey.

         One of the joys that fasting gives us is discipline. It is a strict rule to not eat, to do without, to remind our bodies that our true sustenance comes from God. When I returned from my volunteering in the Dominican Republic, I found fasting made me feel one with the people there that had so little  but were wealthy beyond measure in spirit. As an American with almost obscene amounts of food around us, fasting may give you a bit of a hunger pang. The rest of world's people are very familiar with that pang. 

         Fasting affects or psyche in a way few other exercises can. And just for so we are on the same page, I am not speaking of the almost silly fasts that some religions have created. The '2 small meals that don't equal one meal plus a dinner fast'. That is such a wretched accommodation. We are weaker and more prone to sin for not using the tool, the exercise of real fasting.

          Barring a medical condition or a job that demands 100% attentiveness, this ancient ascetic  practice is a gift and a wonderful tool for us in Lent.  And could the food you don't eat be better served being donated to food pantry? Or the money you would have spent on that food, would that be better off donated to the poor? (Isaiah 58:10)

          Think about it. Where does our true sustenance come from?

          

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often,^* but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak, for the patch pulls away from the cloak, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.’