News and Events: Lent and fasting

Happy Feast of St. Joseph, Husband of Mary.  St. Joseph only has two feast days so as Sisters of St. Joseph the Worker we celebrate both.  Our community feast day is May 1, Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, but we'll be celebrating today too!  May St. Joseph bless you.

So how is Lent going?  Have you been keeping up with your Lenten practice?  Did you know that there are three practices in Lent?  There are fasting, praying and almsgiving.   I don't know which one you chose do to this Lent but I'd like to explore the idea of fasting.

I'm not very good at fasting from food.  But there are other things that we can 'fast' from that might help us grow spiritually.  We can fast one night a week from television and spend the time together as a family.  We can spend the whole of lent fasting from movies.  We can fast from using foul language and putting other people down.  That would certainly help the overall tone of your workplace and family. We can fast from anger.  We can fast from gossip and make an effort to say something nice about the people we usually talk about.  We can fast from eating out all the time and give the money we save to a charity.  We can fast from alcohol, soft drink, junk food or snacks. A hard one would be to fast from the Internet and actually talk to be people around you.  You could fast from using your cell phone as a portable game station and maybe read a spiritual book instead.  There are so many options and ideas.

Then at the end of Lent you can evaluate whether or not you really need the thing you were fasting from.  Do you really need to go back to the way you were living before Lent?  Did fasting from your normal activities give you time to spend with your family?  Did it give you more time to spend in prayer?


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