Dear Friends in Christ,

As we make our way through Lent, I want to commend what are traditionally called the three pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving.

Each year, the Church offers us a wonderful opportunity to renew our connection with Christ and his ministry through works of self-discipline and charity so that we may find our faith renewed and our walk with Christ strengthened.

In my last sermon I talked about taking on practices that take time and shedding those that mindlessly waste it.

There’s a kind of trend these days to talk about “mindfulness” in circles in which kombucha and vegan bao buns are a thing. But mindfulness, for the Christian, might more properly be called prayerfulness.

How can we see the whole of what we do and who we are as oriented toward Christ without thinking that there are spheres of our lives that do not press up against or are not shaped by faith?

The temptation these days is to separate church or faith or spirituality or however we most readily think of our religious life as a distinct circle on a Venn diagram that does not overlap with the other spheres of life.

In reality, the Christ-centered life is one in which all that we do sits within that circle of faith because it is the circle of creation, the circle of our preservation, and the circle of our hope.

Those three pillars of Lent: Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving are about reorienting the things we do mindlessly such that we do them prayerfully.

How do we talk with God? How do we listen to him? How do we make decisions? How do we navigate hard choices? How do we seek guidance? Where do we put our trust? These are all in the realm of prayer.

A more disciplined prayer life is one in which our internal dialogue moves beyond our own self-affirmation or self-criticism to the deeper eternal dialogue that is the loving conversation with the source of truth.

So more regular, more routine prayer is the first step. It is how we begin to remember that our time—all of it—is a gift from God that we are called to spend with clarity and charity.

This is where another pillar, Almsgiving, is important.

How do we give of ourselves for the good of those who can never repay us? That is the model of mercy we are given in Christ.

We can never repay Christ for all that has been done for us, and yet he is always pouring out himself in and for us. So our Lenten choice is to live more generously.

This may be the literal act of giving materially to someone. It may be a deeper extension of that and involve going out to cook at a soup kitchen or work as a literacy coach or career mentor.

So many of you give of your time and gifts in many ways and this work of Almsgiving is not about giving more but giving more prayerfully—seeing that giving through the lens of our connection with Christ so that we can see the whole of our lives shaped and directed by him.

If we are going to give of our gifts, then it makes sense to look more closely at how we use those gifts ourselves. This is where fasting comes in.

Fasting is not about finally finding the discipline to fit into those pants whose buttons have dodged closing for a few years now.

Fasting is not an act of self-improvement. It is an act of self-denial.

What habits, ways of consumption, thoughtless exploitation, routine disregard have we picked up in our lives? In the same way that mindful prayerfulness can change how we see the minutes and hours of our days that are precious gifts, fasting can change the way we see what is set before us on the table.

Food is where we start. Remembering that what we need to live from meal to meal is provided by God. Our thoughtlessness in how we eat shapes our thoughtlessness around other gifts in our lives, too.

The way we eat is the way we live. The way we give thanks for those meals and times together will shape the way we are thankful in the rest of our lives.

So a period of fasting reminds us of the gift of life. It reminds us of the preciousness of what is set before us and who is setting it before us.

It also may remind us that our appetites have gotten out of proportion. A period of more modest appetite retrains us to see that what we thoughtlessly consume and simply throw away may be the very thing someone else needs to simply live.

Fasting reorients our relationship to our appetites and to our sense of what is enough and reminds us that God is enough in all that we do.

These three pillars of Lent right-size our appetites, remind us of our blessings, help us see our time as a sanctified gift, and help us walk more closely with Christ through the wilderness days of our lives.

This Lenten journey is one that countless pilgrims across the centuries have taken. These practices are the tried and true gifts passed on to us for our growth through these weeks.

I’ll close with a quote from a sermon by the fifth century bishop of Ravenna, Saint Peter Chrysologus, who said

“There are three things, my brothers and sisters, that keep our faith firm, our devotion constant, and our virtue enduring: prayer, fasting and mercy. What prayer seeks by knocking, fasting obtains, and mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.”

I hope we will all look for opportunities to rest our Lenten journey on these three pillars so that we find ourselves truly prepared to welcome with renewed joy the feast that is Easter joy.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert