ascetics - 23rd week friday 2014

St. Paul said, Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.  Every athlete exercises discipline in every way.  They do it to win a perishable crown, but we, an imperishable one.

Paul here compares his task of preaching the gospel to an athletic competition.  Like an athletic competition he needs to do askesis a Greek word which means training or exercise.  Askesis is the root word of asceticism and many times we limit asceticism to what we deprive ourselves of – so we fast, we abstain, we restrain and we control.  Asceticism includes these for indeed we have to learn to control our desires and to restrain our hunger and love for pleasure. But more than deprivation asceticism means as St. Paul said to “drive my body and train it.”  It means that in living out and preaching the gospel I need to do even what my body does not want me to do; it means I have to go against my tendencies even if my mind and body is rebelling; I have to go against my desire and need for approval, for praise, for recognition even if I feel downhearted for not receiving them.  I have to fight self-centeredness, or my craving for attention, my tendency to give up in the face of hardships and obstacles.  I have to fight my own fears and uncertainties, I have to go against my frame of mind, a particular mindset and biases.  I have to tame my anger and nourish my patience.  This struggle is part of the askesis of the gospel.  It is not just deprivation of something but going against my natural inclinations and tendencies. To be preachers of the gospel, to be bringers of the gospel we need to be ascetics. This we do because as St. Paul says, “I drive my body and train it, for fear that, after having preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.”