Friday after Ash Wednesday
Fasting can be done for a variety of reasons: to gain liberation from some addiction or vice; to be countercultural, witnessing a different set of values to the dominant culture; to extend compassion and solidarity with those who suffer. Jesus comments on the proper seasons to fast and to feast. Our fasting during Lent helps us to experience the plight of our needy sisters and brothers.
The Masses
My love had not the openness to hold
so cumbersome a human multitude.
People in bulk would turn the dials of my heart to Cold.
The mind would bolt its doors and curtly vow
to leave the crowded streets for a while.
And yet if there were patronage in heaven
my passion was to be
mother of the masses, claiming by some small rite of anguish
this piteous and dear humanity.
Out of its need my heart began devising
ways to receive this breathing populace
without the warm oppression of its weight,
and the fastidious mind sought out as good
a multiplicity of motherhood
till the reluctant answer entered late:
I learned from God the ancient primal mother
whose hunger to create as brought forth these,
a multitude in lone nativities,
whose love conceived the numberless, and none
by twos and thousands; and with Him I bear them
in separate tenderness, one by one.
Jessica Powers
How open is your heart to the masses, the multitudes?
Whom does God ask you to help this day, one by one?
Do you belong to any networks seeking to bring about systematic change for the sake of justice?
An excerpt from Ashes to Easter: Lenten Meditations by Robert F. Morneau
