So much has happened in our country lately that has been quite disorienting. Notably, New York legislated the country’s most aggressive abortion bill that viciously attacks the unborn. Internet assumptions, uncharity, and scapegoating characterized the incident between the Covington Catholic teens and Nathan Phillips. The government continues to show its disunity as it remains obstinately divided over many issues, including immigration and the southern border. And in the Church, the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report and McCarrick scandals have shed and reshed light on some dark corners within the Church. Much has been disorienting.

When the news of the scandals broke out, a number of seminarians and priests in my diocese began a time of intentional prayer, fasting, and penance. Increasingly desperate times call for increasingly desperate, or rather heroic, measures…

For three months, two of my classmates and myself gave up alcohol, prayed a daily Divine Mercy chaplet, intentionally set aside time in our busy schedules to reflect on and share about our weekly joys and struggles, and fasted (two small meals, one regular meal) on Wednesdays and Fridays. Honestly, this was an idea that I was not super thrilled about at first, but then warmed to the idea after my classmates persuaded me.

I don’t share my practices to boast, but rather to hopefully convey some of the fruits of this time of prayer and penance. This article and its follow-up are going to be an attempt to help show the deep significance of fasting in the Christian life. The first parts will focus on how fasting helps to change us, while the second will work to show how it helps to change our world.

All of our efforts were meant to combat the specific evils, I believe, that are at the core of the Evil One’s continued assault upon the Church: the prideful desire for power and pleasure, the desire to isolate and the lack of transparency, and the absence of prayer and the lack of belief in its power. Everything diabolical, everything that causes division and confusion, comes from the Evil One.
Around the same time we started the fast, a priest friend explained to me that he shared with one of his parishioners that he too was entering into a time of fasting and penance for the Church. The parishioner’s reaction was as follows: “Fasting…what’s that going to do? What is that going to help with?”

I fear there exists a major misunderstanding about what the Church believes about the purpose of fasting. Fasting is not just a way that we Christians deprive ourselves good things in order to needlessly suffer. God created the world with inherent goodness and does not want his creation to suffer needlessly. While fasting can certainly be personally challenging, that does not make it a bad thing.

Surely, we know this by how willing we are to sacrifice and expend ourselves during hours of sport conditionings and practices. We know too how any dieting—Paleo and Keto most recently—takes a good amount of sacrifice and discipline in order to have and maintain a healthy body. It’s not that we don’t value discipline and sacrifice; we just don’t think our faith should lead us to do so. We’re tempted to believe that faith should only focus on positive, unchallenging feelings.

In truth, fasting is a practice of reorienting ourselves back to God, who is our ultimate happiness, when we have come to focus more on the world for our happiness. God created us not just to exist, but to live well, to live a life of virtue and holiness focused on him. This reorientation, this real transformation within us, can manifest on multiple levels and in different forms—physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

Without being a purely religiously beneficial endeavor, even the secular medical world has lately come to recognize and point to the value of fasting. Dozens of online articles can be found that advocate for fasting as a way to reorient the body to a place of adequate natural health. Personally, over the three-month fast, in sync with a slight increase of exercise, I lost almost fifteen pounds! The fast allowed me to cut unnecessary weight and I felt better because of it. Plus, for as much as I love a good craft beer and a good bourbon, detoxing from alcohol really left me with a clearer, more creative mind.

Yet the reorientation did not just play out physically. Psychologically, I could tell that, over the months, my cravings in general (food, entertainment, distractions) had greatly receded. At the end of the fast, my portion sizes were much smaller and I actually desired to have less. It is known that it takes about thirty days to break any habit and begin to form a new one. Imagine what three months—not even a quarter of a year—was able to accomplish. I did not so much feel like I was so much a slave of my passions. I felt reoriented.

Spiritually, fasting opens up the relationship between us and God as we begin to acknowledge him more as our continual provider. As we fast, consuming less, we actually become more thankful for what we have in front of us. This humility and thankfulness are at the core of a Christian spirituality. Throughout the fast I certainly noticed my attentiveness to the presence of God noticeably increase. I felt like God and I were much more in sync than we were before. More will be said in the second part of this reflection on the spiritual repercussions of fasting as it functions as an avenue for intercessory prayer.

As the Church approaches the Lenten season, it is the perfect time to reevaluate the practice and significance of fasting in our life. One increasingly popular program, especially amongst young Catholic men, is Exodus 90. The fast that my classmates and I entered into was loosely based on this program. Exodus 90 is not a comfortable addition to your spiritual life; it is a complete overhaul. It is a true exodus from all of the things in our life that distract us from what truly brings us peace and happiness. Importantly, this intense fast is never done alone, but always in community—the ideal for Christian living.

It may seem unreasonable to most people to do this program; it’s an overhaul of our spiritual, psychological, and physical lives. Yet sometimes drastic situations call for us to take drastic, heroic measures. As reflected on at the beginning of this piece, our world is full of disorientingly unreasonable people and situations. Maybe God in calling us to do something seemingly unreasonable in order for us to return to him.

I think fasting is an unreasonable and apparently nonsensical, yet wise practice that we Christians need to recover. Truly, fasting is a gift given to us, and it is up to us to embrace this gift for the good of the Church.

Deacon David Stavarz is a transitional deacon for the Diocese of Cleveland. He is a graduate of Borromeo College Seminary and is currently finishing his formation at St. Mary Graduate Seminary, in Cleveland, Ohio. David has a profound a love for music – especially on guitar or vinyl; he loves enjoying God’s creation through snowboarding, running, cycling, and backpacking; and he loves a conversation with a good friend and good cigar. Dc. David hopes to be a priest of the diocese in May of 2019.

Temptation is real. It is not the stuff of legend and myth nor is it some figure of speech. Temptation is not sin and sometimes people inadvertently mingle the two. Temptation is an invitation to turn from God and to serve ourselves. If we consent to temptation then the actual act that constitutes the turning from God is what is sinful. We know that temptation itself cannot be sinful because of the Gospel proclaimed to us this weekend from Luke regarding Jesus being tempted by the devil. In fact, all four Gospels state that Jesus faced temptation.

Why was Jesus tempted? The Catechism (##538-540) teaches us that Jesus underwent temptation for us, to show us that we are not alone in our struggle to follow God’s will in our lives, and to show us that we can be victorious in the face of temptation. While the devil tempted Jesus through the allurements of pleasure, power, and honor, the basis for this temptation was Jesus’s sonship. Twice in Luke’s account of the temptation of Jesus the devil premises his temptations with “if you are the Son of God.” The devil tempted Jesus with a perverted notion of what Jesus’s sonship was while Jesus clung to the truth of his sonship which called for perfect obedience to the Father’s will. In the Garden, Adam and Eve lost sight of what it meant to be children of God, of the obedience that was expected of them and the grace that come as the fruit of obedience. Jesus in his temptation, and ultimately in the Cross, shows us that he is the new Adam whereby he completely and perfectly chooses the Father’s will over his own.

When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask the Father to “lead us not into temptation.” Immediately we are faced with the problem of an insufficient translation from the original Greek to English. We don’t have to ask God to not lead us into temptation. He won’t, because for him to do so would be contrary to his divine nature as God wants us to be free from the power of evil. However, God does allow is to be tempted. He allows us to be challenged to use the grace the he has given us to discern what is of him (good) and what is not (evil). Facing temptation and overcoming it leads to spiritual growth. Again, this is why prayer, the Sacraments, mediating on the Scriptures, and good works are all so important in our discipleship because these are pathways to the grace that we need.

Let us pray together that these Lenten days may be a time of increased grace for all us through our prayer, fasting, and acts of charity. The grace given to us, that is the fruit of these holy acts, will strengthen us in our struggle against temptation and evil and allow us to stand victorious with the Lord Jesus over the power of sin and death in our lives.

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.

Have you come across the 40 Day Generosity Challenge? Last year I came across this Lenten resource, and wanted to find a way to introduce something like it at Cathedral. You can find out more information here, https:/40acts.org.uk/. In general it invites participants to challenge themselves each day with a task which would engage them in acts of stewardship.

We have created our own Lenten challenge called the “Discipleship Challenge.” It is based on the idea that when we make small goals and have a friend to hold us accountable, transformation occurs. The Discipleship Challenge invites you to find a friend and challenge each other to be disciples. Each week during Lent we will suggest a challenge. The challenges are based around the CRS Rice Bowl and the Lenten Prayer Booklet we have provided you. The goal is to complete the challenge and then hold the other person accountable by calling, meeting, or emailing and asking how they did or are doing with the challenge. Accompaniment can have the power to transform. When we minister to each other, God is present. He shapes us into disciples who make other disciples. We are in this together.

Cathedral staff is committed to walking through Lent with anyone who may not have a partner. Please contact the offices if you would like to participate, but need someone on staff to join you. We welcome your feedback during the challenge and look forward to hearing your witness stories along the way! Please send any questions or thoughts to Katie Price at [email protected].

Katie Price is the Coordinator for Stewardship for the Cathedral and coordinates stewardship for the Diocese.

Yes it’s later this year but the time is finally upon us as this coming Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, marks the beginning of the holy season of Lent. Like many things in life, what you get out of Lent will depend on what you put into it and, with Lent, attitude is everything. I will confess that in my younger days that I saw Lent as nothing more than a forty-day slog through drudgery and Friday nights of limited options for going out to eat; once again, attitude is everything. So how do we see/approach Lent?

Lent is a great love story.

It may not seem to be so on the surface but what is the season all about? If we first focus on sacrifice, self-denial, and penance, then we will be placing our focus in the wrong area. Lent is a great love story because it is about a God who has a love for us that is unbreakable, unrelenting, and inexhaustible, even though we are guilty of rejecting his love time and time again. The selections that the Church gives us from the Scriptures demonstrate this. We are reminded that God has chosen us to be his own and that he has done this in a wonderful way in his only Son through baptism. Through sin, we have squandered the grace that God has given us through this sacrament, but Lent is about a call to return to that grace again. This is what the first four and a half weeks of the season speak to, from Ash Wednesday until the Fifth Sunday.

The second part of Lent continues to tell that same great love story but recalls how this love of God was perfectly manifested in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus, that is, in his passion, death, and resurrection. The fifth week of Lent transitions us to Holy Week which ends with the triumph of Easter. It is at this glorious feast that we renew our baptismal promises, having focused on allowing God to renew the grace of that same sacrament in us throughout Lent.

Sacrifice and self-denial are our responses to the gift of God’s grace that is offered to us for our renewal. The penances and pious acts that we may choose to adopt are not ends in themselves, but acts by which we seek to root out in our lives what does not belong so that the grace of God may find a welcome place deep in our lives. The same is true about the reception of Ashes on Ash Wednesday. The ashes we receive are nothing more than the ash of old palms that has been blessed. There is nothing mystical about the ashes in themselves. What is important about the ashes is that we receive them as an outward sign of an inner desire to change our lives, to be converted back to right relationship with God. The reception of ashes and pious acts of sacrifice and self-denial must come from a genuine desire to change; if not, then these acts are empty.

There are many things that we can do for Lent: add daily Mass to our daily routine, pray the Stations of the Cross, ready the Scriptures daily, participate in giving to CRS Rice Bowl, give alms in the special collections for charity, give your time to a good cause, add time for daily prayer, and the list goes on and on. Whatever you may do or not do, make whatever choice you do in the hope of growing deeper in the love that God has for you. Lent is not about what do I have to give up but rather how can I respond to the Lord’s call to turn back to him. The first reading on Ash Wednesday from the Prophet Joel says: “even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart.” Make sure that this coming Lent is about your journey deeper into the grace, love, and mercy that is freely offered to us by our God through Jesus.

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.

I have a brochure entitled, “Why do we ‘have’ to go to Mass?”. The cover photo portrays a young child facing backwards in the pew and looking bored. My husband, a convert, long ago also asked the same question about the “obligation” of going to Holy Mass. Each question came from a different orientation, i.e., boredom versus obligation. Of course, the answer is because it is one of the Ten Commandments to Keep Holy the Lord’s Day! It is not an obligation so much as it is a commitment to honor the Lord’s Day.

Personally, I never had either of these feelings because I always felt it was an honor to go to Holy Mass (BTW, when did we drop the “Holy” Mass part?). Every Sunday on the way to Holy Mass I say to myself, “I GET to go to Holy Mass today.” It is an invigorating expectation! As I genuflect to the Altar and Tabernacle, I’m excited!

After Vatican II lay people were encouraged to participate more fully in the Liturgy. I finally got the courage to volunteer as a Lector/Reader and Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. What a gift that has been in my life. I GET to give Jesus to others. I GET to serve Him more dearly. I GET to speak His words in this Holy place, our Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception What a blessing!

Rebecca and husband, Woody, have been Cathedral parishioners since the mid-1990’s and led the Cathedral Bible Study group for many years. She assists Sr. Francella with home and hospital visits. Rebecca has served as CCCW President, Springfield Deanery President, Springfield Diocesan CCW President, Chicago Province Director, and National

Last weekend at each of the parish Masses I preached on the subject of abortion. Abortion is the most brutal act that is allowed in our “advanced society” because abortion targets the most innocent and the most defenseless among us. This heinous act also arouses strong passions in people, passions both good and bad. Sadly, we have allowed this satanic act against the sanctity of human life to become a political football. Human rights, of which the right to life is paramount, should not be political issues as they, along with human dignity, are the gift of God and not the purview of the state except that the state is morally obliged to protect these gifts of God. In an 1864 letter to the editor of the Frankfort Commonwealth,

 President Lincoln wrote, “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” The same sentiment is even truer regarding abortion; if abortion is not wrong, nothing is wrong.

In my homily, I stated that ending abortion will ultimately not be achieved by legislative acts or judicial rulings; these things will only limit it. Abortion will only end when each of us, together, build a culture of life. This Sunday’s gospel gives a blue print for the Kingdom of God, for how to build the foundation of that culture of life. Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel to you who hear I say, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you (6:27-28). He further states: Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you (6:37-38).

 We must be living billboards in every aspect of our lives concerning our Lord’s words in the Gospel. If we want a culture of life then each of us must do our part to build it; love begets love and mercy begets mercy.

The words of the Lord Jesus can seem like a tall order because they are, especially if we think that we can fulfill the Gospel command on our own. Saint Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians this Sunday just as we have borne the image of the earthly one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one (15:49). While we are earthly creatures, we have been adopted in Christ as heirs of the Kingdom of God through baptism. The grace of God is always seeking to be at work in us, to bring to perfection the image of God that we were created in. If we cooperate with the grace of God then we will more and more bear the image of the heavenly one and this will be made manifest in our thoughts, words, and actions. If we would build the culture of life, if we would fulfill the Gospel command, then we must allow the grace of God to work in and through us each day so that we might always be a new creation for both the glory of God and for his work of renewing the face of the earth.

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.