Ash Wednesday: Matthew 6:1-6; 16-18
Last summer, we admired the grace and skill of the athletes who competed in the Olympics in Rio. More recently, New England football fans could rejoice in the success of the Patriots – and marvel at the grace and skill of Tom Brady, even at the (relatively) old age of 39! Whether we look to professional or amateur sports of all kinds, we see men and women athletes who impress us with their skills, and who also show a certain joy at competing and reaching their goals. But what enables them to succeed? What frees and empowers them to attain their goals?
It’s something we don’t see during games or at meets. It’s practice. It’s work on fundamentals. It’s the daily grind and sacrifice and commitment that athletes go through to train themselves physically and mentally. By that constant work on the fundamentals, they get their bodies in the best possible shape, hone their skills, and reach the point where they intuitively know what to do and how to do it. They are freed from being overly self-conscious and are enabled to just do their sport or event for the sheer joy of it. And the path to this freedom and joy? Doing the fundamentals, every day.
Now imagine that the Patriots were to tell Coach Belichick: “Oh, by the way, we’re so good that we don’t need practice. We don’t need to play pre-season games. Just tell us where and when the first game of the season is, and we’ll be there”. If Coach Belichick agreed (highly unlikely), the results would not be pretty. The players would be rusty, not in the best shape as individuals and not sufficiently in tune with each other. We’d see missed blocks, missed tackles, and avoidable penalties. The players would tire too quickly, and would be more vulnerable to injury for not being in the best shape. Neither they nor their fans would be pleased with the result.
Let’s imagine that our lives as Catholic Christians are like a game or athletic competition of some kind. We are called to live lives of skill and grace (see the Sermon on the Mount for some examples), and promised by the Lord that, when we live in this way, we will know joy, peace and true freedom. We will be able to respond, intuitively, to what life throws at us. We will have a sense of what is good and what is not. We will experience a certain freedom from self-consciousness and rejoice in doing what the Lord calls us to do.
But how do we get to this point, Catholic athletes? By working on the fundamentals. They may not be easy or exciting at first, but they are the means by which we get in spiritual shape as individuals, and learn to work together with others on our Catholic team. Chances are, if we find Catholic life difficult or Mass boring, it is a sign that we’re missing some of the fundamentals. We’re not doing what we can to get ourselves in the best spiritual shape possible, with the grace that God gives us.
Lent is the ideal time to do a spiritual assessment of our lives. Now is the time to ask ourselves how well we have been working daily on the fundamentals. Which ones do we practice regularly? Which ones have we neglected? Where are we spiritually out of shape?
Look to our spiritual athletes – the ones who are our examples and inspirations. Look to the saints in our history. Look to people we know personally who are obviously in sync with the Lord. We will see a certain skill and grace in how they live their lives. We will also see a certain joy radiate from them. And all of this came about for them because they mastered the fundamentals.
What are the fundamentals? Our Gospel reading for today offers us three of them. There are more, but these three will be a good start: fasting, almsgiving and prayer.
Fasting. Just as athletes train their bodies and sacrifice some instant gratification in view of future success, so must we Catholic athletes train our bodies. We all feel physical desires – for food, drink, sex, and other things. These desires are simply there. They aren’t bad in themselves. They need to be trained. We don’t indulge all of them all the time. We learn to say no to each of them, some of the time, and learn when and how to say yes to them. All this so that we can say a fuller “yes” to the Lord, with both body and soul working together and training together.
Almsgiving. Through the discipline of almsgiving, we train our attitudes toward our possessions. We learn not to hold on to anything too tightly. Nothing we have is for ourselves alone. What we have is entrusted to each of us, not only for our own good but for the common good. We train ourselves to share, to give and to receive. None of us can create ourselves. We all depend on one another and on the Lord. This interdependence frees us from slavery to anything we have and helps us joyfully share what is ours with the whole Body of Christ.
Prayer. Prayer trains our wills. It opens us up to the will of God. It reminds us that we do not live for ourselves. Each one of us has a calling from God, some mission. But it’s God’s work, not just ours. God invites us to share in it, each in a certain way. Prayer places us in an attitude of trust in God. It trains us to be patient and to persevere in doing and being who and what God has called us to do and be. It is only in prayer that we can endure a Gethsemane. It is only in prayer that we can arrive at Easter joy. It is only in prayer that we begin to understand that the trials and the joys are already ours whenever we entrust our lives to God in faith, hope and love.
Fasting. Almsgiving. Prayer. These are the three fundamentals that the Church recommends to all of us for this Lenten season. Trained by them, we can live Christian lives of skill and grace, and come to know a real joy in being open to God’s will and in living it out. May these three fundamentals be, once again, the building blocks of our lives and a sure guide to becoming more faithful to the Lord.