pray, fast, give alms - ash wednesday 2018

Today with Ash Wednesday we start our 40-day preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Triduum – the paschal triduum is the highest feast celebrated from Holy Thursday and Good Friday to Black Saturday, to Easter Sunday.  Celebrating the anniversary of the paschal triduum allows us to renew its power and effect in our lives.  Jesus died 2000 years ago but every time we celebrate it in its anniversary its effects are renewed in our lives.

And so, to prepare for this renewal, the church gives us 40 days beginning today and asks us to do specifically 3 things.  To pray, to fast, and to do almsgiving.

First, to pray.  Well we pray every day, don’t we?  But this time the church wants us to do it willingly from the heart.  It should be something that you freely choose to do and not something imposed by seminary rules.  And that means you participate well during prayers, starting with punctuality and reciting it loud enough, in unison as a community.  Willingly choosing to pray means I can do extra prayers.  I don’t have to pray the rosary only during schedules.  I can do it when I’m alone, I can do it when I’m walking around by myself or when I jog.   Doing extra also means I can go to mass during weekend breaks and during vacation.  I don’t need to be told.  I don’t need to be required by rules or by the prefect.

Second, the church asks us to fast.  Probably you say, “this is done only on Ash Wednesday anyway, so I can do it.”  No, fasting can be done every day.  Again, don’t feel obliged.  This is one season, the season of lent, when you are asked to do things willingly, choosing to do it, wala pilitay.  Fasting is fasting not just from food, fasting is fasting from what you like to do and what you want to do but you don’t need to do.  So ara na may distinction na – what you want but don’t need.  For example, eating in between meals, sleeping during vacant hours, talking during silentium magnum.  Fasting reminds us that we have a will, each of us has a will and it is so powerful that not even the devil or God can take it away from us.  Even God has to ask permission from us.  If your will is strong if you say to yourself I will not eat, nobody can force you to eat.  If you say I will not talk during silentium magnum, you will not talk even if you are tortured.  It is the will that makes saints and martyrs.  And each of us have that capacity in us.  Lent reminds you that you have that, and as we deny or forgo certain things for lent, it allows you to see how strong your will is – kon paloy-paloy ukon bakod.

And thirdly, the Church asks us to do almsgiving.  Be generous.  Give.  Share.  Generosity allows you to part from the things you value.  And so generosity is not just generosity.  It requires detachment.  Actually, amo ni ang mas mabudlay.  Kahapos maghatag, mag-share kon nagasolobra, kon indi mo man lang kinahanglan ang isa ka butang ukon it is easy to given if you get something in return.  But it is difficult to share when we value something, when the giving hurts.  This is the first sign nga mangin maayo ka nga pari, not the giving, but the detachment, the capacity and joy that accompanies the willingness to part with the things you value.  Singganon ka for example, may obra ka di sa weekend break, galing weekend break, going home, ti puede ka?  Puede ko a.  That is not just generosity.  It is detachment from something I value – I can sacrifice, I can forgo.  And so that’s the three – pray, fasting, and almsgiving.

Lastly doing all these three things for Lent as we look forward to Easter, the gospel asks us one more thing - to be quiet about them.  No one should know.  Do it, and do it quietly.

And so we mark this intensive days for prayer, fasting and sharing with ashes in our foreheads.  It is a mark that I am starting something good, something that involves a lot of will power, something that needs a lot of dying to my wants, to my preferences, to my conveniences, to my attachments.  Things in me will be burnt in these 40 days, there will be values in me, false values that must die out.