How to Have a Holy Lent (#022)

[Music] welcome to the burro shire podcast i'm brandon vaught i'm here with my best friend as always father blake britton and we're releasing this special episode on ash wednesday because this episode is devoted to helping you to have a holy lent you know this day ash wednesday is a both a somber day and an exciting day in the church's liturgical calendar as we anticipate christ's resurrection on easter and so especially at the time when so many churches are closed or restricted still because of kovid maybe you're not able to get into the season of lent as much as you would like in your parish we hope a lot of the resources and tips and discussion points we share during this episode will be useful to you but uh before we get into it father blake it's good to see you man welcome likewise always a blessing to see you brandon and it's providential that you would mention everything going on with kova during the lenten season because that was one of the original uh reasons i guess you could say why we began this podcast was during the cover 19 pandemic at its height this past year during the lenten season it was on the feast of the annunciation of the blessed virgin mary march 25th and we also specifically chose that day to honor our lady and she's very much blessed the podcast and put it underneath her mantle and and with that we just want to say thank you thank you to all of our followers to all all of our viewers and listeners what you've done to support us it means the world the podcast has been very successful thank god and that's by his providence and by your support so thank you very much for doing so and please continue subscribing um click the notification bell to keep on getting notifications from us on what's happening with the broshard podcast and review and share the podcast let people hear the good news of the gospel let them hear the the culture and the literature and all the beauty goodness and truth of our one holy catholic and apostolic faith so thank you to all of you and we look forward to now sharing our reflection on the holy season of lent all right so we kind of sketched out an outline for the discussion here and i think this is what we'll do first we'll start off with the history of lent so what is it why do we do it second a theology of lent and so we'll reflect on it from a theological perspective focusing on those those three common tenets of lent namely prayer fasting and almsgiving these three practices that we do in a heightened way during this season and then finally we'll close with some practical um ways to celebrate lent and this is something i've i've longed for and looked for in my many years as a catholic is um there's not a lot of advice from people on very specific ways to celebrate lent in your home what do your specific lenten practices look like we'll get to it in the third part but i there's always a reticence i think um especially for catholics who take the linton uh season seriously you know a kind of bashfulness little humility to share with others what they do you know we don't want to fall into the trap of spiritual pride but on the other hand it leaves a lot of people wondering well what am i supposed to do during lent to make it a good lens so i think a lot of the things we'll discuss here will be helpful but let's let's start off with just the history of lent so give us some of the basics about what we should know yeah on that one point you mentioned about this hesitancy to share what we're going through for the lenten season i had to pray for the same thing as a priest how prudent is it to share with people what i'm doing for the season of lent but i eventually discerned that there's a difference between bragging about what you're doing and sharing what you're doing in order to build up someone else's faith and so many of my parishioners know what i do for the lenten season there are some things that i keep private just between christ and i and for the sake of the church but a lot of them i share publicly and again it's not to have any sense of vanity or glory but rather to edify their faith and to give them ideas too of what they can do for their penances and so that's definitely the spirit of this particular episode of the podcast going to the history of lent it's a very ancient practice it's rooted back in the 4th century a.d so it's definitely not a recent invention of the church but rather something that's seminal to christianity reason being is that in the ancient church they wanted to find ways to prepare the people of god spiritually to celebrate the two hinge events of salvation namely the incarnation and the paschal mystery aka the passion death resurrection and ascension of christ these are the two events that give us salvation and so the early church started developing spiritual practices in which we could prepare our souls to enter into the feast of christmas and the feast of easter as time progressed the church started refining these different practices and they matured within the different cultural milieus and eventually they became articulated in three practices fasting prayer almsgiving prayer being the foundational one that's first and foremost followed by fasting which is a very ancient practice of the church and finally almsgiving this really hallmark definition of the church as this charitable institution by which christ continues to manifest his love in the world you know one thing i've noticed father blake is that despite this long lineage of lent dating back as you said to the earliest centuries of the church and there's been a pretty consistent practice of it throughout the centuries you know one of our uh favorite shows that we like to watch is last kingdom you know which focuses on the uh the medieval uh formation of of england so roughly ninth 10th century england and everyone there practices lent you know if the show focuses in large part on king alfred and so he's eating you know like a small bowl of soup and a tiny sliver of bread for his meals and and you could see the aesthetical discipline on display but i've i've noticed and i'm sure most people listening to this podcast have noticed too over the roughly last roughly 50 to 100 years the practice of lent or i should say the demands that we place on ourselves for the practice of lent have significantly waned you know i don't think it's an exaggeration to say we've gotten a lot softer when it comes to practicing lent and i don't just mean in terms of fasting i mean in terms of prayer and almsgiving as well have you noticed that like there's there's been a steady stream of lenten practice for centuries but then like a sudden downward dive in the past 100 years absolutely one of the main reasons would be the technological revolution the fact that we now have a comfort and convenience culture and our main goal has become to escape anything that makes us uncomfortable or inconvenienced so that's the mentality with which we approach everything including the church and that's why there's also some other issues that take place within catholicism but going back to the topic of lent most certainly you've seen a waning of the devotions of the lenten season and because of that you've also seen simultaneously a waning of the feasting seasons and this goes back to our podcast on leisure and how joseph peeper says there's an inherent connection between fasting and feasting and one of the main reasons why we're not able to enjoy christmas like we used to enjoy easter like we used to is because we don't fast during advent and lent like we used to if you don't know famine you can't know feast if you don't know suffering you can't know joy all these sort of things are necessary and tied together and that's what christ teaches us first and foremost through the cross but also through the wisdom of mother church and her tradition so absolutely i agree with you there has been a waning of these practices and we need to reclaim them i always give a lincoln pep talk about this point when i preach on ash wednesday and say giving up chocolate doesn't count a matter of fact if you look back at the medieval forms of fasting during the lenten seasons as well as the advent seasons mind you because advent is also a season of fasting penance and prayer in the medieval time period the fast for everyone including the laity included fasting from all meat fasting from any other drinks besides water fasting even from poultry products including eggs milk so all these things were included in the great lenten fast going into particular holy week which was a week of extreme austerity the church still has a vision of us entering into the lenten season with that kind of spirit so even though the fasting regulations have been modified we are still not supposed to be having desserts not supposed to be having alcohol we're supposed to be a lot more somber and subdued especially when it comes to partying hanging out with friends all those sort of different things and we'll get to this when we get to the fasting point but we don't do that because these things are evil or bad but we do this because these things are good and our temporary fasting from those things we're affirming their goodness so that white so that we might enjoy them with christ and not in and of themselves so again we'll get to that point later on when we speak about fasting but i agree with you it's uh the spirit of lent something that we definitely have to reclaim and if we do so it will only enrich our experience as catholics something you just said struck me as really profound a lot of things you just said struck me as profound but one thing in particular did and it's that the technological revolution has shaped our relationship to our bodies into nature so one of the major shifts was that um after the enlightenment and the rises the rise of the modern sciences man sought to dominate and control nature for for reasons of pleasure and comfort so if we can bend the natural world to our will then we'll be happier more comfortable more pleasurable less sick etc but one downside to that you know of course there's there's many positive benefits to technology and the sciences and all that stuff but one one negative effect is that you no longer are um subservient to the natural rhythms of the world you're no longer subservient to things like hunger and unwanted pain and things that require resilience or perseverance namely all the all the positions we put ourselves in during the linton season it's like our lives thanks to technology are meant are antithetical to what the lenten season is pushing us toward technology pushes the other direction technology's pushing us toward immediate uh uh satisfaction of our senses to comfort to pleasure lent is like pushing us in the exact opposite direction right and that's why you'll have people like saint john paul the second question are we truly that advanced in culture of a civilization and that's a legitimate question just because we have amazon prime doesn't mean that we're a cultured and civilized society just because we're able to immediately associate our appetites does not mean that we're progressive we have to ask what is true human progress and what does that mean to truly progress and to become humane is it not to actualize the deepest aspects of our humanity our intellect our rationality our spirituality our souls and our hearts or is it just to be convenienced and to avoid suffering and pain that really radically changes how you approach reality and we have to ask ourselves those questions all right let's shift gears we just spent a little time on the history of lent and and uh lenten practice throughout the centuries let's move to the theology of lent so maybe the most important word when it comes to linton theology is sacrifice and when most of us hear that word we think giving up stuff i got to sacrifice this got to sacrifice that um but you when you give your linton retreats and linton talks you like to focus on the true meaning of that word by breaking it down into its etymological roots so tell us a little bit about what sacrifice actually means most certainly you know i love doing etymology so i will happily tell you uh so the word sacrifice comes from two latin words sakra which means holy and fatre which means to make thus these two words put together means to make holy that's the literal translation of the word sacrifice to make holy to do something that makes you or something around you holy it does not mean to give something up this negative connotation yet again comes from this convenience comfort culture of sacrifice why i don't want to sacrifice because to make myself holy demands that i surrender something so we have to reclaim this notion of sacrifice not necessarily giving something up but rather doing activities which help us grow in our holiness and that is the fundamental purpose of the season of lent that through prayer fasting and almsgiving we're able to sanctify ourselves and the world around us that by the way is what we call christ's sacrifice on the cross the greatest blessing it is the making holy of the entire cosmos through the death of christ through his divine heart through his merciful love and so that notion of sacrifice is pivotal and that's what leads us to really dive into this spirit of lent with the prayer the fasting and the almsgiving that's really helpful to me because i think every talk i've heard about lent or every book i've read about lent puts forward the colloquial definition of sacrifice meaning to give something up in a transactional way so lintz always presented to me as well you give up a bunch of things so you're kind of emptying yourself so that you can fill that vacuum with more holy things like you know god or prayer so for example maybe you give up watching a movie for an hour and you use that hour to pray more or to do spiritual reading more and i don't mean to discount that obviously there's there's great truth and value and all that but it didn't click for me until talking with you about the roots of the word sacrifice that that transactional view of lent is ultimately deficient because god doesn't just want to replace some things within you with other things he wants to make you into a completely different person he wants to make us into a new creation in paul's words you know or c.s lewis says he wants to make you into a little christ he makes wants to make you into himself and so to sacrifice means not just giving up stuff so we can replace it with other stuff but it's a more holistic uh process of being made holy and there's lots of things that contribute to that giving up some things sure but also adding things developing things growing in new ways so sacrifice has a much broader definition than just getting rid of things yeah and if we approach now the season of lent specifically those three characteristics of prayer fasting almsgiving with that mindset it allows us to discern more mature ways to celebrate the lenten season so if you approach it with that transactional mindset again it'd be like well i'm going to give up chocolate why because i like chocolate and it'll sort of be irritating every once in a while when i get a hankering for chocolate and maybe that'd help me love jesus more you know or even something a little bit more deep so you'd say well i'm going to add 30 minutes of prayer a day and take away 30 minutes of going on social media not that those are bad things however there's so much more to the lenten season and what it's asking of us what it's inviting us to do so that we could truly enrich our christianity and ultimately to sanctify ourselves which means to foster an encounter with the living christ and that's what leads us to the first characteristic which is prayer so we know that prayer is that fundamental disposition activity which allows us to encounter the living lord and there are two forms of prayer in the life of the church you have liturgical prayer which is that proper prayer established by jesus christ through the sacraments to foster an encounter with with him and then you have personal prayer these are things that fall into private piety or private devotion when we want to grow in the virtue of prayer then we need to do so always by morphing ourselves first in the liturgical prayer of the church and secondarily in our private piety each of these three areas by the way prayer fasting almsgiving correlate to one of the theological virtues so prayer correlates to faith fasting correlates to hope and almsgiving correlates to the virtue of charity so we see in this first one that when we go into liturgical prayer into the prayer the life of the church that we're also growing in the theological virtue of faith through this prayer and that's deepening within us so it's very important that we always first and foremost learn how to pray with the church and that will then inform our private prayer so some things that you can do during lent what first of all we have to ask what is liturgical prayer what counts as liturgical prayer number one the mass number two would be the legend of the hours and remember when we said in our podcast for the lord to the hours the liturgy of the hours the bravery is the second highest form of liturgy in the church so the highest form is the sacrifice of the holy mass and flowing right out of that is the liturgy of the hours and then another form of liturgical piety is eucharistic adoration so adoration of the blessed sacrament or even forms of a holy hour with the blessed sacrament the tabernacle but specifically the exposition of the blessed sacrament those are three areas in which we are called to grow during the season of lent in liturgical prayer and one of the most practical ways that you can do that and we'll speak about this later on is by picking up the lures of the hours i'm telling you just doing that alone brandon and i could talk all day long and we have we have a whole hour-long podcast about lords of the hours but he and i could go even longer speaking about what the liturgy of ours has done for our our own life as catholics brandon remind me did you pick up praying there's the hours four linton practice or at least chime in and interrupt you to say just that yeah i i got serious about praying liturgy hours two years ago during lent i was kind of dabbling with it you know doing it here and there but then during lent i committed to praying the five hours a day not five hours of time 300 minutes but the five hours of the liturgy of the hours um and it was i mean that was the most meaningful significant thing i did during that lent because it changed it sanctified that particular lent you know making it holy but it also became this lasting discipline that i've done ever since then and it's been one of the most beneficial spiritual practices so i'd encourage people to do that maybe that's too much to bite off this lent you know especially we're recording this on ash wednesday it might take you a few days to get the books and learn how to use them and all that stuff but maybe just decide just to do morning prayer every day during lent or just evening prayer but try to integrate the liturgy of the hours during lent that honestly if you would ask me father blake what's my number one recommended spiritual practice for lent that'd be it find some way to start incorporating liturgy the hours i agree a hundred percent even if it's just one of the hours if you were just to start doing compliment for example that's the easiest of those that's the hour tonight prayer that's night prayer so again if you need sort of uh a crash course on the hours you can watch our podcast on it maybe that would be a good way to start off your ash wednesdays watch that podcast podcast every day during lent on repeat and that that'll be it [Laughter] speaking of fasting from sanity yeah you're going to have to listen to burroshart podcast every day for 40 days i'm thinking now that as a confessor that's probably what you've been assigning your penitence in the confessional how do you think we get subscribers [Laughter] in the sacrament of confession you know your penance is to subscribe and click the notification bell is this a penance you think you can do i don't know father it seems pretty difficult well then i don't know if i can absolve your sins i mean but uh all joking aside yeah so you could pick up that episode on the allergy hours and like brandon said you don't have to do all five but it's a wonderful practice i could say i agree the number one spiritual practice that will change your life during the season of lent is incorporating the daily prayer of the lord of the hours it because what you're doing there is that you're now incorporating your private piety into the universal prayer of mother church so you're now allowing your personal piety to be integrated into the divine praise of christ offered to the father by the grace of the spirit so this prayer now transcends your own time and space and enters into the eternal divine liturgy and that's something that is irreplaceable okay so we're talking about how to grow at prayer during lent and you gave us this two-part breakdown you have liturgical prayer which includes the mass and the liturgy of the hours eucharistic adoration any prayer attack attached to the liturgy or the sacraments but then we have personal prayer and we might break that down even further within personal prayer you have devotions like novenas or the rosary you have wrote prayer so just reading prayers that other people have written or reading hymns other people have written and then you have what we might call conversational prayer where it's just you and the lord conversing and listening and letting him move and stir your heart how do we how do we grow in this second type of prayer personal prayer yeah so step one would be inserting yourself into liturgical prayer we always learn how to pray with the church and then again secondarily we then grow in our private piety so with that this is where you have really that freedom to discern informed by the liturgical prayer of the church informed by mass and foreign by allegedly ours lord what are the particular aspects of my personality what are the charisms that i'm drawn to and help me to develop a personal piety so the real foundations of personal piety besides the sacred liturgy besides being informed by the liturgy is private silent prayer so before we do literally excuse me before we do rosary before we do novenas um any of those other wonderful prayers we have to go in silence yet again that's something that we've lost as of late because of the technological revolution we've lost this ability just to sit still with the lord and that is more important than even some of these popular pious devotions because it's in silence and stillness as teresa of calcutta says that christ really comes to meet us silence is the forge in which holiness is made so having a daily amount of time set aside for silence is key lent is a good time to start that practice whether it's just 15 to 20 minutes a day if you're able do 30 minutes to an hour a day discern what's possible within your life but having at least 15 to 20 minutes a day of silence with christ just sitting there with the lord will be pivotal adding on to that again through the discernment of the holy spirit and this is where you have to really speak with the lord and let the spirit guide you do you feel like taking on a daily rosary uh daily divine mercy chaplet maybe offering up different novenas for special intentions so these are some other areas that you can grow in the personal piety the church has a plethora of fantastic pious devotions i mean devotion to the precious blood the prayers saint bridget devotion to the saints the holy angels maybe you want to pick up one of those charisms and grow in it do you want to grow in a deeper awareness of the holy angels well then pick up the chaplet of saint michael and start praying the the chaplain every day for lent so there's all sorts of things and it's sort of fun because you could do research and see okay my personal piety where do i want to grow in knowledge and wisdom and the practices of catholicism and how can i form my personal piety around that with these different devotions there's a tension that is going to pop up in the rest of this episode especially when we get to fasting also almsgiving but i want to talk about it a little bit with you here and the tension is on the one hand i think it's safe to say that generally in the church this isn't true for every person but generally in the church we tend to be soft and less disciplined and less rigorous when it comes to prayer arms giving and fasting again general i think it's fairly safe to say compare people today to people 100 years ago i think it's quite clear on the other hand um i i've experienced this myself and i have other friends that have as well there's a tendency the deeper you get into the spiritual life and the more you mature uh the more the stronger the tendency to bite off more than you can chew right and that's also a spiritual danger and again i'll speak from experience i'm trying to think of specific examples i think maybe three or four years ago um at the time we were going to daily mass so that was solid but you know beyond that just uh personal prayer was sporadic i'd pray the rosary every every now and then you know maybe two three times a week i'd have 10 15 minutes of personal quiet prayer but there was no disciplined every single day doing it and so when lent came around i set out to do not just some of the things you just described but basically all of them so i said every single day i'm going to pray full rosary every day i'm going to do a quiet holy hour every day i'm going to read 20 minutes of spiritual reading and i remember on fat tuesday the day before lent started i was so fired up because i was like this is going to be the most amazing lent that i've ever had look at all these things that i'm going to do the lord is going to transform my heart in so many ways by like day two i was already overwhelmed and some of those things started to fall by the wayside and then that starts the whole spiral of guilt and you know you end up it ends up backfiring and you have a worse lent than you expected now again i describe it as a tension because um again i don't think that's the most common problem in the church i think mostly we're not doing enough but there are some people and i imagine a lot of the people listening to this podcast that might be tempted to take on more prayer more liturgical additions and novenas and things what would you advise as a spiritual director for this case that's where discernment is key so remember that holiness is not something that you accomplish first we're not pelagian holiness is something that christ accomplishes in you and that's why you say before anything else prayer has to be built upon the liturgical action of the church and private silent prayer those are the two keys those have to be in place first and then once those are in place and settled we can introduce these other pious practices but first we have to be rooted in the church in her liturgy sacrament of reconciliation on a regular basis especially during the season of lent the holy liturgy the mass that's christ working just being present at those events and opening ourselves to the spirit is already sanctifying us and then also in that silent prayer letting the lord speak to us then from that point forward you can discern to introduce other things the real deciding factor brand and i'm so happy that you brought this up the real deciding factor is if i start introducing these other pious practices and they overtake my devotion to the sacred liturgy or my private time and silence with the lord i'm already doing too much i'm not ready for them yet and that's okay don't be embarrassed or ashamed or upset at yourself about that there's nothing wrong with pushing off praying the whole rosary every day so that you could solidify having 15 to 20 minutes of prayer with christ in silence every day or so you go daily mass or pray the lord of the hours there's nothing wrong with that that's part of our development in our journey of holiness it reminds me of a story from one of the desert fathers if if you just want to delightful read i strongly encourage you to pick up there's some different editions of just the sayings the quotes of the desert fathers uh there is a famous tradition at that time in the early church when you'd go up to these monks and you say habuna which you know habuna which means father give me a word and the monks would come out and give you a little one paragraph story or one paragraph sort of lesson and you go and you contemplate that throughout the day well one of these words that was given by the the desert fathers tells us how there's this young monk and he had heard about this older monk who'd been living in the desert for 60 years fasting celibate prayer just on fire with the spirit and the young monk really wanted to aspire to this life so he goes asks the elderly monk what he's doing and then the next day tries to start living that lifestyle immediately and within a week he's ready to leave the desert and go back to the world so he returns to the monk and he says to him abuna father how are you able to live this lifestyle like i've been suffering horrific temptations my chastity i've been you know i can barely make my fast every single day and the wise monk said you've done too much you put yourself through too many things it took me 60 years to get to this point be trust in christ and allow him to form within your heart these things and then he got up and he actually cooked for the young monk and gave them a meal and said this is what you need for your holiness right now is this meal and that was the wise monk's way of pointing out to him take it at the pace that you can so he wasn't excusing it the goal is to reach that 60-year mark of holiness that's our goal one of the problems nowadays is that we try to lower the bar so we're here not trying to lower the bar the bar is still up here it's still a bar of holiness but we have to be realistic in understanding that it's going to take time to reach that bar of holiness as long as we're constantly and actively striving for that built upon the liturgy and silent prayer and then also adding in these other pies devotions we're going in the right direction so definitely be at peace with yourselves again all the things that we're suggesting here you don't need to go out and do tomorrow right after actual wednesday but their ideas to slowly integrate not just this lens but every lint for the rest of your life every lent i take on something new i continue to grow as a priest as a disciple of christ and the same is true for all of us super helpful i liked you pointing out at the very beginning that the scenario i described is fundamentally pelagian it's it's us trying to do more things to acquire more benefits or to do more things to please christ more it's a lesson that i had to learn i think the last two lengths before lent started i would talk with my spiritual director about what i'm going to do but i would also just spend time in quiet prayer and ask christ what do you want me to do not here are the 10 things i'm going to do for you but what do you want me to do where do you want to grow me how do you want to transform me and listen and listen and inevitably he'll put little promptings on my heart or he'll open you know a new interest or a new direction that points to a book or a spiritual discipline or a type of prayer or something and it always leads me you know in the direction i need to go to get to that bar instead of me just trying to muscle my way up myself absolutely and the maxim who really guides us in that disposition towards god is saint john in his first letter when he says it's not you who loved god or rather god who first loved you in other words the impetus of holiness is on the father before it's on us the father's one that seeks us through his son by the grace of the spirit and then our duty is to be responsive so receptive and responsive to the father's initiatives the father should be the one who's guiding us by the spirit in our lenten observances and practices and that can only happen if we're listening to his voice of the liturgy and if we're in silent contemplation good well let's shift now to fasting and i think this is probably the one most people associate with lent you know for some reason prayer and almsgiving get short shrift but everyone thinks lent fasting means i gotta give something up right so let's talk about fasting first outside of the scope of christianity because fasting's a pre-religious if you will discipline i mean you find it in pre-christian pre-jewish cultures you find it in pagan cultures i mentioned you know the the viking shows that you and i like to watch and even among the pagans before they have a big battle or a significant decision they'll go you know fast or brave the elements on a mountaintop there's something just naturally human to this idea that before big moments such as the celebration of easter we need to fast and purge ourselves from the goods of the world yeah yeah this is something key within us and it is fascinating to me as you study ancient culture how you're able to recognize this trend has always been part of it of course in christianity it reaches its fulfillment because in the ancient world fasting was typically tied to a negation of the world so the sense that i want to escape worldliness in order to enter into the transcendental form of divinity whereas in the christian dynamic because of our faith in the incarnation so the fact that god became man and dwelt among us the notion of fasting takes on a different kind of timbre so fasting and christianity is not a negation of the world because the world is evil we know the world is not evil and god made nothing evil but rather fasting is a way of ordering our appetites of giving restored proper order of our desires so they are oriented towards the higher good the most popular form of fasting is from food there are many forms of fasting which we'll get to in a second but let's just use the example of food the reason why i fast from food is not because food is an evil i fast from food because food is a good but it's a lesser good and it's a lesser good that is to point me towards a higher good so when i fast from food what naturally happens well my stomach aches i'm aching for food that temporary filling of ache in your stomach is supposed to be a reminder of the eternal ache within your soul for divinity the hunger that your soul is always searching for that your that your soul is always seeking to satiate by being faithful to christ and now you know the logic behind the eucharistic fast before the holy mass the purpose of the eucharistic fast for the holy mass is to synchronize your body and your soul so that when you go to receive the host when you go to receive the precious blood you are actually hungry that you're filling these pangs within your body which a reminder of what your soul is feeling at that moment for the holy eucharist i've always favored the language of john of the cross here when he describes attachments and detachment so instead of fasting you know because i know for a lot of people fasting just connotes giving up food it's almost synonymous with just dieting right but right the detachment attachment language i find more helpful because when you fast from something you're detaching yourself from perhaps a disordered desire maybe an inordinate desire for food so that you can attach that desire to something else so to me that gets both sides of the equation whereas if you just focus on fasting if you just focus on giving things up you're only getting half the equation right you're you're missing right the point of it you're missing the end of it or the goal of it it's not just about emptying ourselves that's buddhism buddhism is completely emptying you know your mind your focus your body um as the goal but that's not christianity christianity is detaching from the goods of the world not just from evils but detaching from the goods of the world so that you can more fully attach yourself to the highest good which is god and this is the correlation between fast and feast fast and feast we fast so that we might feast not just again on food and brandon and i tr you know trust us are very good at feasting when the proper seasons come into play after all of our fasting but that being set aside we fast that we might feast not upon things of these world only but we so that we can feast upon the things of god so when i fast when i put my body through some form of mortification whether that be with food or something other than what i'm doing now is i'm preparing it for the divine feast to have communion with the lord and that's why the theological virtue that this practice is typically tied to is hope so hope is that faith in things that are not yet seen meaning faith in that there will be a fulfillment as saint paul teaches us so hope is this filling in the depths of our being that we were made for something more than just what we can touch and what we can feel but there's something within the depths of our being that aches for the transcendent and fasting reminds us of that fact constantly we were not created just to be satiated in our animalistic appetites but there's a deeper hunger within us that is longing for a more profound fulfillment and that fulfillment is jesus christ in his catholic church all right let's move to the theology of charity and again or you know charity almsgiving again we'll circle back to prayer fasting and almsgiving at the end of the episode and look at specific ways to practice these things but let's do a little reflection on this third discipline of almsgiving again this is one of the most ancient most characteristic dimensions of christianity read accounts from non-christians in the first few centuries and what they most comment on is christian charity how these christians love one another how they take care of widows and orphans how they serve the dying they marveled at this distinct charity among these christians talk a little bit about charity and why we're meant to practice it in a heightened way during the season of lent yeah charity revolutionized the world and this is something that's not appreciated enough in western civilization there was no notion of charity before christianity meaning agape this selfless sacrificial love there's a reason why orphanages did not exist for christianity why hospitals did not exist for christianity why taking care of the poor and giving out soup kitchens was not existing for christianity because there is something within the incarnation the death the resurrection of jesus that imbued now the human species those who conform themselves to christ christians with this unwavering belief that every single human being is made in god's likeness and image and they deserve dignity opportunity and respect and this will become synonymous with christianity in the first centuries of the church the roman spies would immediately know who a christian was and send them to execution if they saw them cleaning the wounds of a leper or feeding an orphan child that was not from their own family taking care of the elderly who should have just been left for dead only christians did these things the ancient pagans did not have notions of this kind of caretaking they would just put them into a leper colony they just sort of push them out of civilization or society christians start integrating the broken into society and this is one of the hallmark uh events and actions of christianity why is it important for our own spiritual growth remember that each of us is made in god's likeness and image which means that remain in the image of the blessed trinity the father the son and the holy spirit as saint augustine teaches us in his book de trinitate on the trinity book five he'll mention that the the real essential the character the real essential facet of the trinity is that they are for one another pro they're for you they're for another person it's only in giving of themselves that they are most themselves so the son gives himself to the father the father to the son the gift is so absolutely entirely selfless that it actually manifests itself in the existence of a third which is the spirit the same is true for us we are most ourselves when we're giving ourselves away and that's where charity is not just about giving money that's part of it because that's part of our time talent treasure but charity is also about giving of yourself when we make that extra donation into the offertory basket when our family may need that 20 bucks or when we sign up to try to help out a ministry at the parish when we could just be at home watching the football game but we decide let's help me and usher help let's be uh let's help be an extraordinary minister of the eucharist when we sign up to go to the saint vincent nepal society and to feed the poor and to clothe the naked instead of just hanging out or going to have our career to make more money those are moments when we are becoming more humane more and more ourselves because we're reflecting the divine image of the blessed trinity and that's the real logic behind charity almsgiving yeah it seems to me everything you just said is more true especially during lent like it seems like charity is of course perennially important because every person's made in the likeness and image of god which means everyone has god for his for their father which means everybody's a brother and sister regardless of you know what they believe uh where they live and so we should act in charity toward others for that reason alone however during lent the demand of charity is is heightened because of its transformative effect on us because of what it does to us because charity is making us more like god it's it's sanctifying us it's making us more holy and so yes charity is good because of what it does in the world among our brothers and sisters but during lent especially it's good because of how it's transforming us yes yes exactly then that's what the season lent is about it's about conforming us more closely to the image of jesus christ and before all else christ prayed number one he establishes the liturgy he fasted regularly throughout his life not just the 40 days in the desert and of course he was a man of deep charity and then he is the god who gives himself in the flesh and the cross the greatest act of charity of all time this becomes as the apostles teach us the fulfillment of all revelation christ giving himself to us on the cross so that's the at the real heart of the season of lenders to conform us closer to christ prayer fasting almsgiving these are the ways to accomplish that goal all right as promised let's spend the rest of the podcast episode talking about some practical ways to have a holy lent and again i know for a lot of you you're listening to this on ash wednesday maybe a few days after ash wednesday do not fall into the temptation that well lent's already started so it's too late maybe i'll do some of this stuff next year no no do some of these things starting now there's there's no such thing as a perfect lent even if you do them for the final three quarters of lent or the final half of lent you know it doesn't matter so don't feel like lentz already passed you by because you're listening to this after it started so let's start with prayer father blake we did kind of cover a lot of practical ways to live out liturgical prayer and personal prayer in a heightened way during lent but did you want to say anything else on that particular discipline well just in general i would suggest for for our viewers and listeners to look up in our show notes i have a hand out there link to a handout that i actually typed up for my parishioners it's one of our bulletin inserts and it's entitled same thing as his podcast how to have a holy lent and i go through prayer fasting almsgiving and it's actually an examination of conscience for each of those three things that leads the parishioner in this case but also can lead you and a real reflection on okay here are some practical ways i can enter into the spirit of lent through prayer so i for example on part of that handout i'll say do i spend daily prayer with the lord do i do lecture divina with the gospel of the day do i pray the lord to the hours do it so it's just an examination of conscience to help you understand what are some ways i can put this into practice so that summarizes really well and it's also a hard copy of what we're what we're about to speak about in um in this upcoming these three different topics so when it comes to prayer again we want to always grow in prayer in two ways through the liturgy and through private devotion simultaneously so we can't just say well my prayer is my prayer there's no such thing as my prayer meaning in isolation your prayer always flows out of the prayer of the church and then becomes yours as a gift it's not yours to possess it's something that's been given to you by christ through the sacred liturgy so what are ways that god is calling you to grow in liturgical prayer this lenten season what are liturgical devotions that you can begin right here right now number one would be the liturgy of the hours that's the most practical realistic one that everyone can do if you need a way to find out how to pray lord of the hours download the ibrevery app for your android or apple uh it's very easy to do and just pick one of the hours so traditionally there are five you have the office of readings you have morning prayer daytime prayer evening prayer and compliment night prayer i would suggest if you're new to the liturgy of the hours just to start with night prayer that's a very simple thing to do it has an examination of conscience right before you go to bed and then you pray some of the psalms and you prepare yourself to be commanded into the hands of the father you entrust yourself chesterton once said very in his usual witting way that there's no more christian activity than to sleep and and of course what he was getting to at that point was that to sleep is to put yourself in the hands of the father so in compliment night prayer you do that that would be one of the best ways for liturgical prayer then out of that go ahead and add into the prayer facet a daily time of silence 15 to 20 minutes a day if you can do those two things then you could discern about adding something else such as the angelus the divine mercy chaplet maybe praying the rosary but really it's very important i'm saying this now not just out of my opinion i'm saying this as a spiritual director and as a priest you've got to have liturgical prayer and silent prayer down pat before you integrate something else in private pride or devotion not because those private parties and devotions are bad they're amazing i pray all i pray the rosary i pray the divine mercy chap i love them but they're only really fruitful my heart and they don't become a distraction or don't become a way of taking away from christ because i'm rooted in the liturgy in silent prayer so discern pray lord what ways during this lent am i being called to grow in the liturgical prayer of the church and in my own personal private prayer good let's turn to fasting now and this is where i know i get a lot of questions and i can only imagine as a priest the amount of questions and advice people seek from you on this question what should i give up during lent what should i eat what should i not eat what about this what about that um so we thought we'd kind of go over some basics and again i want to add the caveat here that father blake and i decided to be very transparent in this episode talking about what we do and not again as a sign of spiritual bragging i know for myself and i'll get more details here in a minute i've had to really work up to some a lot of a lot of these practices and i really struggled for several years giving up different things during lent but let's just start off with this baseline father blake i remember one thing you told me a long time ago was uh the prescriptions for fasting from the church are a minimum and like every catholic should be doing at least that again i don't want to over generalize but for most people in the church there's exceptions here because of health reasons or because you know you're elderly or you know whatever that that even the minimum amount of fasting the church requires is is tough and i get that i'm not meaning to demean that but for the overwhelming majority of catholics what the church asks us to do during lent is the apps should be the absolute bare minimum so just to be clear in that that what the church asks is that on ash wednesday and good friday we fast and the church in america has defined that very particularly to mean something like one full meal and then maybe two snacks that don't add up to one full meal and then in addition to those two days ash wednesday and good friday every friday during lent were to abstain from meat that means no meat at all friday um now again for a lot of catholics they think wow that's that's a lot that's what i'm going to commit to and i i just think father blake for most of us we can do a whole lot more than that wouldn't you agree yeah most certainly we that like you mentioned brain that's something that all catholics supposed to be doing and then we're supposed to do something in addition to that for our own spiritual enrichment and i do want to mention by the fact by the way that uh you know i've seen some people before say well you know i'm gonna give up man i'm giving up meat on friday so i'm just gonna order two papa john's extra large stuffed crust pizzas and grandma that that also is sort of breaking your fast too i mean the whole point of this is to go through again that letting go of your appetites and giving a proper order to the appetites to search for the higher good so if you're not having meat on friday but you're going out and having a lobster dinner uh not so much helping to to reorder your appetites so so be mindful of that that being said traditionally during advent and lent we give up dessert and alcohols that's like a given you know so in addition to the prescriptions from the usccb uh on fasting especially with ash wednesday good friday but also all the fridays during lent we're also really should be giving up dessert alcohol parties going out to restaurants those sort of things we should retract from those things again not because any of those things are bad it's the opposite because they're good but we want to put them back in their proper order again maybe our longing for food maybe our longing to hang out with friends maybe our longing for restaurants has replaced some spiritual longings that should be deeper in our hearts and i think that she'll be amazed and i know i was the first time i really took lent seriously and i went through the no desserts no alcohol no going out to restaurants for those 40 days like week two i realized what a wimp i was with some of these things and the fact that i'm like man i can't believe i actually enjoyed restaurants so much i can't believe i was just that i'm actually irritated at the church because i can't go to a restaurant right now uh and that made that put me into perspective and sort of put me in my place as well that my my appetites are not properly ordered i'm not desiring the highest goods i'm letting a desire to go out to a restaurant actually capitalize and go above and beyond my desire to pray the lives of the hours right now or to be faithful to christ and that is not good so i need to put that desire to eat out to have desserts to have alcohol in its proper place so there's sort of also another baseline that will absolutely revolutionize your lenten season i promise if you do that you'll love it other forms of fasting that you can discern i know a lot of people who give up meat for the whole season of lent again you don't have to do that but that's a practice that definitely does it when you alter your whole eating routine it affects your daily life in a really powerful way so that's something that i personally do i give up meat for all 40 days i don't go over to people's homes for those 40 days it's really powerful to see my parishioners they know it's actually funny because right before ash wednesday i was getting tons of emails from my parishioners inviting me over to their house for dinner to restaurants because they know that once ash wednesday starts i will not be going over to their homes and i will not be going out to any restaurants that's a time for me to enter into the desert with christ so if we begin that way that will absolutely revolutionize your spiritual life another thing i've seen some families do even with children is once a week having a bread and water fast it was really touching to me a family in texas uh they during the season of lent have their whole family including their children do a bread and water fast every friday and they sent me a picture you know and i was just so touched uh those are different ways that we can fast from food now and discern that again you can discern in addition to the requirements for ash wednesday and good friday and the friday in addition to giving up dessert and alcohol and going out what else can i do to really modify my diet so that i'm reminded of being in the desert with christ so discern that pray about that again this is not to put any pressure on anyone or make anyone feel like man i have to i didn't know this i have to change everything now no not at all just discern what are some ways i could i could gently and prudently integrate this kind of fasting into into my daily life and then you have fasting from technology and other goods uh social media we know dominates our lives nowadays news media all these different facets discern how you can fast from comfort and convenience comfort and convenience are the new standards of society how do we fast from comfort and convenience how do we fast from being able to go online and just look up on our social media account what people are thinking or or one of our facebook posts how do we look up how do we fast from even some of the modern day comforters that we take for granted hot water i know even some of the kids at the school you know they're mentioning how they sleep on the floor during lent you know i'm i i was really impressed last year one of our sixth graders did that for 40 days i slept on the floor and he was so proud of it you know um so these are also things that we can do to fast from and help us grow out of that spirit of comfort and convenience into the spirit of sacrifice and humility what would you add to that brandon anything i missed yeah um i thought maybe i just let people have a little peek into each one of our lints and and what we've done the last few years i've i've done at some length almost every one of those things i usually don't do all of them for one lent but for example so for for last lent i um i did no desserts um no snacks between meals so just three meals a day and i usually don't eat breakfast i mean just two meals a day um no uh soda so for me soda is f infinitely more tempting than alcohol uh so giving up soda was was is far more difficult than giving up alcohol um but then we also tried i can't remember if we did this last year or the year before that where we did bread and water on wednesdays my wife and i and then friday we just did a complete fast from food so just water only on friday and that's tough i remember it must have been two years ago because i remember that was the most difficult lent i've ever had to the point where i i think i was maybe pushing myself past what the lord wanted and that i was just you know sort of white knuckling my my disciplines and trying to be as ascetical as possible um i'm not sure i'm gonna do that again this this coming glenn i'll have to pray about it and talk with my spiritual director um i mentioned no social media as a family um we moved the tv out of the living room during lent and advent so we don't do any family movies any family tv shows it is so delightful those evenings because the only things left are to read or to play games or to talk or to sing or play piano and so the family atmosphere is so much more improved if you decide just to go no technology during lent i've had some good friends i haven't tried this myself but their family they go without artificial light during lent so think about that it was i never even considered that before talking with them but you know that basically means you can't really do anything until like 6 00 am 7 am and then you can't really do anything together after like 8 p.m you know so they'd sit outside under the stars they'd talk but um they said like uh it was interesting seeing all the psychosomatic benefits of that deep sleep schedule because with no lights on they went to sleep early they kind of slept in until the sun rose and all the effects that that had even spiritually on their lives because they said we we were so much more spiritually alert prayer became easier it became easier to focus at mass because we were getting uh so much more time so i think actually you know what we did one year do that for holy week so we went holy week with no artificial lights and that was really um spiritually profound so again that's a little of what i've tried to do i i echo some of the things we've said already that you should these decisions are are personal in the sense that they're individual to each person um not personal in the sense that they're up to your own whim you need to talk to your spiritual director if you have one hopefully and then pray about it ask the lord what he wants you to do not what you want to do for him you need to let christ lead you and i think one major lesson i've learned is that he leads you in a in a different slightly different direction every lent these don't have to be necessarily cumulative things like well i gave up x y and z last length so this length i'm going to do x y z plus a b c plus d e f next year and keep building because then it just it becomes too overwhelming so ask the lord what he wants you to do this particular len yeah yeah most certainly and you brought up a really good point brand and i know we have a lot of young families who listen to our podcast young mom and dads don't think that your children are too young to practice the season of lent yeah as it says in the scriptures do not say that you're too young rather trust in the lord so it's not obviously appropriate to their age you don't want to make your three-year-old not eat for 40 days you know but a three-year-old or a four-year-old could have a basic concept of almsgiving of maybe i'm gonna sacrifice playtime with my toys for the sake of christ you know and understanding his cross um they could have a basic understanding of fasting i really really like this food and so i'm not going to have this food for the season of then i'll have another food with dinner and i've been amazed with your family brandon to see that your kids do this for real i mean it's it's not it is possible um it's it's not impossible it's amazing to see uh again just even gianna and uh and zelly in their very simple childish ways but they practice the season of lent and we need to allow that to really diffuse our homes that leads to another point about liturgical decorating uh there's a great book called around the liturgical year with the von trapp family which i strongly suggest everyone to get especially any moms um but she'll mention in there the importance of decorating your home according to the to the liturgical season that's something that my mother did when i was growing up that was fantastic and she would even have it to where during the season of lent there was no videos or music in car rides so the radio was silent when we for example go to school or when we go on a road trip during the season of lent you know there's just sort of radio silence but then in the home i know kathleen does the same thing during holy week covering up paintings images even family photos um making sure that our whole lifestyle really is immersed even within our home putting up purple garments somewhere putting out some sand or maybe with a crown of thorns and some nails just letting the kids know because especially children are very tactile to let them know and to see okay whoa the house is different the house is different and our own directory as priest i take down all the sacred art from ash wednesday until after the easter vigil so our rectory is pretty much barren during the whole season of lent and then i go into the chapel during holy week and i take down everything from the chapel even the crucifix and that way only the lord's there in the blessed sacrament until good friday whenever he's put into reservation so all those are ideas that we just want to share with you again those aren't mandates or anything like that but just really really fruitful and spiritually beneficial things that you could do to enrich your at your lenten season yeah maybe to add one thing to what you said about doing it as a family and how little kids are far more capable of participating in these disciplines than we often give them credit for one thing we've learned in our family is that we want to do some lenten disciplines as a family so that these disciplines are uniting us to each other and then we invite each person in the family to to tack on their own additional lenten discipline so i mentioned for example in our family you know we do no tv we do we we typically do no music in the car um and then um we do our our food and and drink discipline so no desserts no snacks um the no desserts no treats thing is super hard for the little kids but then in addition to that as you said we then invite them to say you know what do you think god wants you to do just yourself during this land and you don't have to make a big deal out of it you don't have to tell your brothers and sisters um but man i've i've been impressed by again what the kids are capable of doing not not to our credit to kathleen and i's credit but like god just works in the hearts of of children with a with a certain innocence and naivete that blows me away so it for example our our two oldest boys isaiah and augustine um i think they might have got this from you actually now that i'm thinking about it out loud that for the last two or three lengths they've they've slept on the floor every single night they've slept on the hard floor um they kind of like it now because they do it together so it's you know it's they sleep next to each other it's like camping out it's kind of a fun different thing but that's something i've never done i didn't teach that to them i've never slept on the floor you know i think a lot of adults would find that to be a challenging penance but for a kid they just picked it up and did it and they when when um easter comes back around and they get to sleep in their bed they they appreciate it and we've had conversations about what that did for them in their heart and isaiah's told me things like you know it's it's taught me that i'm able to do uncomfortable things that that normally i didn't think i'd be capable of doing so that language what he's what he's moving toward even if he can't articulate it he's detaching himself from comfort his reliance on comfort and that virtue is going to pay dividends for years to come both religiously and intellectually and vocationally to to recognize life isn't about comfort and that my self-discipline is so much more powerful than just falling into what my appetites or my comfort demands so i'd echo what you said that um you don't have to force it on your kids again we invite our kids to do something and some do some don't each year changes but invite them because i think a lot of parents will be surprised by what their kids are capable of yeah i've had that experience with our kids at the school a lot of the parents are just blown away by what their children will do because i always give the children's mass homily on ash wednesday and i'll list off suggestions and we have had eighth grade boys one year there's a group before them they all decided to give up video games and all electronics for the whole season of lent and they would call each other and pray together on the nights that they typically would game together so instead of gaming they would call one another and they would pray together and that would be their lyndon pride they did they did that for 40 days their parents said we never imagined that our eighth grade son would do this like we just never thought it was possible but they did it they did it again i mentioned the sixth graders who slept on the floor we have others who did the bread and water fast again this is all of their own volition it wasn't forced upon them just suggested they did it and they loved it see children's souls are naturally hewed towards the good and holiness we're the ones that take them away we're the ones that convince them this is too hard we're the ones that convince them just you know no this is too extreme this is too radical don't do this because we've become also soft in our spiritual life and we've lost spiritual grit and then we pass on that softness and that weakness to our children don't do that your kids are strong and they can become saints if we just open up for them the door and allow them the opportunity and i think i agree i think that that you'd be blown away by uh by what your children are capable of it's pretty phenomenal for me as a priest to witness these families grow in such holiness and the final thing i'll say about fasting is in regards to vice so all of us have sins that we struggle with specifically seven deadly sins and so which one of those deadly sins is particularly present in your life so let's say that you have struggle with gluttony with greed with lust with envy try to also form fasting around negating those vices so if you're having a struggle with chastity perhaps you need to discern some form of fast in order to help increase your virtue of chastity whether that be fasting from technology or fasting from certain temptations or friendships or relationships or you can orient your fasting of food for the grace of an increase in chastity so lord i'm going to fast today just do a bread and water fast for an increase in the virtue of of discipline because i'm gluttonous or an increase in virtue of humility because i'm envious and prideful so lord jesus please help me to grow in those virtues that's also very important to heal your your penances and your fasting according to the vices that you struggle with uh to remedy those with the grace of jesus i wanted to uh get your feedback on one final item with fasting um it's something that you taught me as well so for the last several years i've done the ash wednesday good friday fast which you know again the bishops say one normal size meal two small meals for me for you i know for a lot of people we basically just don't eat on at all on ash wednesday or good friday we do you know just a straight water fast but then one thing you recommended was for the holy trinium so this would be thursday friday saturday of of holy week that you do the same complete fast from the end of holy thursday mass on thursday evening all the way until the easter vigil on saturday evening so you're looking at you know roughly 40-ish 48 hours um and so i did it for the first time last year i know i know you've done it several years and it was simultaneously the i'd say one of the top three or four most difficult physical things i've ever done i'm so weak willed when it comes to food and drink so just to not have anything for three days thursday friday saturday 40-ish hours total um it was simultaneously one of the hardest things i've done but then one of the most spiritually gratifying things i've i've done i remember the celebration of easter for me last year was heightened to such an enormous degree because these physical longings aligned with my spiritual longings and they were both satisfied on the same evening with the glorious liturgy of the resurrection and being able to eat and drink after that after being so hungry and and thirsty um talk about this practice and maybe i want you to be delicate because i know even some people hearing that would say oh that's just too much for me i'm thinking of one of our great heroes fulton sheen who famously struggled with fasting i mean he said on multiple occasions it's just not a gift the lord has given me i ca i'm not good at it i can't do it he you know would get dizzy spells and stuff and i'm sure there's lots of people like that so please don't take this as prescriptive saying everybody listening to this should do that this year but but talk about that holy tritium fast and its spiritual benefits traditionally that is called the great fast um and it's something that's not mandated but definitely exists in the tradition of catholicism you'll have even some people who fast uh some of the saints who would fast all of holy week so from palm sunday to easter sunday so i participate in the triduum great fast and it's like you said just one of the most enriching devotions that i was able to discover thank god that tradition i actually discovered it through a very holy priest who taught me about it and when i incorporated it into my lenten practices and my holy week practices it revolutionized my encounter with the risen lord on easter sunday so again the fast begins on holy thursday at 4 pm and it will end after whatever easter liturgy you would attend which should be the easter vigil but really extra extra incentive to go to the easter vigil exactly because the fast is supposed to be maintained really until you break the fast with the sacred liturgy with conception of the holy eucharist um and so i will share with some of the people here the parish they're like well father i don't go to the 10 a.m i don't go um to mass till 10 a.m on easter sunday i'm like well you know that's the breaking of the past but um but yeah so traditionally it's from holy thursday to the easter vigil that would be the fast and it it is unbelievable again be prudent i know some people have health concerns or what have you so we're not saying that you have to do this but if you are strong and you're able it's going to be difficult it's going to be hard it's going to be exhausting but it will be one of the most spiritually enriching activities that you do you will look forward to it every year i look forward to the great trident fast every single year um and it's and it's beautiful now because that spirituality has now transferred to my flock the majority of the ministers who are sharing right now in the truedem sacrifices and the triduum celebrations to participate in the great trident fast for example our music director at our parish he does the great triton fast you know a lot of our ultra service dues our seminarians it's uh it's transformed all their lives so i would suggest doing that and then i know i keep extending the fasting section here but there's lots of practical points and questions that i know i've been wanting to ask and talk about for years and years and years and never had an outlet so i think this would be helpful to people the one last thing i wanted to mention is uh over the years as i've taken taken fasting more seriously during advent and lent one another unexpected benefit has become the appreciation and celebration of the solemnities during advent and lent this gets back to the peeper thing you were saying that you can't fully appreciate feasting till fasting but man like for lent for example when the solemnity of saint joseph rolls around or this limited enunciation on march 25th and uh you know all of your fasting's supposed to go away for those days these are periods of tremendous celebration no fasting um you can enter those feasts with so much more gusto and enthusiasm than if they're just one more day among many because you're just acting that day like all the other days so have you experienced that same thing i'm guessing you have oh you and i have experienced that together when we're texting each other 30 minutes before 4 p.m on the vigil of st joseph i'm sending you a picture of a big plate of chocolate chip cookies and like saying are you ready are you ready to rumble so and just so you all know the vigil and i used to get into arguments with the other priest here about this because the other priest was very strict he's like no the solemnity you maintain your fast until you know you wake up the next day after midnight on the day i was like no that's not what the church teaches for solemnity it's a vigil which means that by 4 p.m on that day you can start breaking your fast so for you're right i mean i have found that it's so you get so just to clarify that you're saying you're saying like march 19th march 18th on 19th at 4 p.m you can begin correct yeah correct so march 18th at 4 p.m technically begins the vigil of saint joseph and so it just is so powerful to me uh how my heart aches for the feast of saint joseph how my heart aches for the feast the nunciation and not just because i'm gonna break my fast i mean that's exciting right well no i'm saying like my point was and i'm this i think what you're getting at is your heart ache is now aligned to your body ache like all of your being is aching for the same thing for different reasons perhaps but they're all aligned in the same direction yeah and that's exactly what i was going to say i mean just it's not just about breaking the fast that breaking the fast is symbolic of the joy of saint joseph the joy of the annunciation the fact that the church has provided us these solemnities i call them the oasis in the desert of lent um we arrive at these different oases to prepare us for the rest of the journey so i'm going to invite all of our viewers and listeners as well please please celebrate the solemnities during lent all fasting and abstinence is suspended on march 19th and march 25th for the season of lent so take that into full account and celebrate it be a people a feast when it's time and be a people of fast when it's time as it says in the book of ecclesiastes there's a time and place for everything part of living the liturgical life of the church is knowing that time and place all right i think we're we're moving close to this being the record-setting longest bursar podcast episode which is probably a record we're going to break repeatedly throughout the next several years but let's let's move forward away from fasting so we talked about practical ways to practice prayer practical ways to fast um any more you want to say about almsgiving yes so for almsgiving just very simply for adults ask yourself some practical questions am i contributing weekly to my parish that's very important to tithe i mean it's part of our christian responsibility am i contributing to the poor am i giving money to catholic relief services or to the saint vincent de paul society those sort of things and then finally with uh with our time and our talents am i signing up for ministries am i giving time in town to the parish am i volunteering to work at the soup kitchen or volunteering to do this or that that's all part of almsgiving with children one thing i uh one of our families does that i think is brilliant is during the season of lent they have their children pick different toys to give to the poor so the children have to go throughout the house they're like okay you all you have to pick you know i'm just making up a number but let's just say three toys you have to pick three toys that you're gonna give to the poor children you know not to be toys that are in good condition they can't be ones that you've broken or anything like that needs to be good toys that you really enjoy that you're willing to give to those who have less than you do you know you have a mom and a dad you have a roof over your head you have all these things what can you do to help this other child's life be a little bit brighter or maybe making no note cards for people in nursing homes you know having your kid color cards and then to mail them to the nursing home so there's all sorts of things that we could do to instill in our children's heart as well the sense of almsgiving one of the things that kathleen taught me um kathleen meaning brandon's wife taught me that was just i love although i modified it unknowingly it made it a little more difficult so kathleen's version is that there's like a mason jar and for every good act of your of the day every sacrifice specifically like a sacrifice or an act of charity or what have you she puts a bean like a dried bean into the jar and then on easter that bar that jar of beans transforms into a jar jelly beans and the kids can eat the candy you know for some reason i thought it was done another way and so what i've been telling my parents mistakingly is to find to find their kids favorite candy and every time that they do a good act or make a nice sacrifice to place that candy into the jar and then to put it to where the child can see it but not get to it and they have to look at it every day for 40 days until easter and then they get to eat their favorite candy so you know you could modify that how you want you could have the kathleen very kind actually motherly loving version or you can have father blake very brutal version the sacrifice jar in our family has given birth to a whole family of moral theologians because now throughout lent you get all sorts of questions like was that a sacrifice was that a sacrifice was that do i get to put a bean in the jar it's like well let's think about this you know did you just do something to put a bean in the jar did you just do something that was nice but perhaps not sacrificial what does it mean to offer a sacrifice on someone's behalf so it's provoked all of these nuanced questions that i never thought we'd have to get into for the sake of a jelly bean but it is what it is was picking up that torah an inherently amoral activity dwight does that fall under the principle of double effect and if i place a bean in the jar isaiah steps forward said contra okay so let's keep moving one of the things we haven't talked about at all only because we talk about it on nearly every other episode is books so spiritual reading during lent um we probably don't need to spend too much time on this i'd recommend everyone go back and watch the episode we did on how to build a good catholic library where we talked about all of the core fundamental great catholic books we provided lots of lists lots of recommendations virtually any of those would be good during lent but did you want to recommend maybe a few a few uh specific good books that would be appropriate for lent my first of 100 suggestions would be we'll do the the father blake book of the month club which includes the collected works of joseph ratzinger now that you've mentioned that a couple of the other people who watch those have been like yeah father blake your book of the month is three books [Laughter] don't it's my book of the month okay but um but all joking aside so first uh and this something that brandon and i both do and it's it's actually a common practice not just him and i a lot of people do this is there's a tradition during the season of lent to read a book on the life of christ and so that's something i do every lent i know that brandon does as well and some other people so there are several books i suggest in that category the life of christ category which really this is a great spiritual practice i'm sure brandon wants to add to his own experience of it but this is a great spiritual practice i would suggest for everyone and a lot of my own parishioners do this so we have the to know christ jesus by frank sheed very popular very popular in a fantastic book you have the life of christ by fulton j sheen and word on fire just produced a wonderful edition of that that i strongly suggest you have the lord by romano guardini he was a great 20th century theologian really one of those inspiring figures of the communion movement and then of course you have the best one of all of those which is jesus of nazareth holy week by pope benedict xvi and that's the one that i actually read every lent so every lent i read that that volume of pope benedict xvi so that's what i would suggest in the life of christ you want to add to that because i know that you had a particularly powerful experience with frank sheed's book brandon so what would you say yeah i've had i've done with frank sheed's book what you've done with pope benedict's book which is to read it almost every lint i haven't done it every lint but maybe four or five times i've been through that book and it's so deep and profound there's always something it's like reading the gospels themselves which is basically what it is as it walks through the gospels that the gospels are endlessly probing and offering new things no matter how many times you read them um but i would affirm reading the life of christ um that should be a no-brainer but then in terms of other spiritual reading one lesson i've learned from um different mentors and and priests that i've worked with is to ask the lord is there some particular area of the spiritual life that you want to develop within me um so for this past advent for me i sensed when i was praying that um the lord really wanted to develop my understanding and participation of confession so not only not only to go to confession more often but to deepen my understanding of the sacrament so as to get more out of it and to to probe more grace from it and so um i did some research found a couple of good books on confession so throughout advent uh i did a long study on confession it's gonna take me probably through um some of this lent as well i'm reading this really good book by father benedict bower he's a benedictine priest associated with the opus dei movement friends with opus dei and he has a great book called frequent confession and it's on the value of of going to confession frequently and by that he means once a week or a couple of times a month not because you have grave sense every single one of those times but because confession itself can be a way to transcend even resilient venial sense and so how to purge even the smallest venial sins out of your life through frequent confessions so that's just one example um i think father blake you've counseled a lot of people on the specific vice of acedia and how during lent that could be a good time to work that out of your life you want to say something about that yeah there's so much i could say um we speak about a lot in our podcast i'm a little worried about there's a deep breath before that yeah there's a lot i can say about that as we're nearing the hour and 20 minute mark so let's just go into hour two of our secret body um so we do speak a lot about this in our episode on confession do we have oh spiritual woundedness i'm sorry on our episode on spiritual woundedness so i do suggest to know for our listeners to go back and listen to that episode because we mentioned the demon of acetya which is that demon that fights against your personal holiness a very dangerous demon if you want to learn more about this demon besides just listening to that episode of the podcast you can also read a fantastic book called the noon day devil it's done by a benedict monk named nalt n-a-u-l-t and he just with such clarity and keenness is able to identify this demon and the fact that it is the most dangerous demon of our time and that's the subtitle of the book it's called the noonday devil the demon of our age or the demon of our time it's really a wonderful book and i actually have all of my spiritual directives are required to wear this to read this book when they first come under my tutelage so before we even get into the real depths of spiritual direction i have them do two things um we go through the spiritual woundedness talk and then we go through the noonday devil so that's just one of those fundamental spiritual texts when you read it you're going to be it's almost like reading the screw tape letters you know you're sort of reading that you're like yup yup yup that happened to me that happened to me i can see that i can see that and so he's very good at unveiling in a much more spiritual way than the screw tape letters so it's very it's an explicitly spiritual mystical work but really unveiling how demons work in our lives and how an unveiling temptation so the new day devil is great um and then of course uh we're in the year of saint joseph uh which is awesome that our holy father pope francis has declared that and saint joseph has a major solemnity in the season of lent march 19th doing a consecration of saint joseph would be a wonderful way to celebrate the season of lent uh and there are some great books that you can get for this consecration i'm actually doing the consecration with my whole parish this lenten season we're doing ours it's uh consecration to the heart of jesus through joseph is the name of our book it's a wonderful text um but i know that you just recently did a consecration uh brandon to st joseph and you use the the galloway text correct yeah yeah which i highly recommend phenomenal book it's called consecration of saint joseph the wonders of our spiritual father by father donald calloway yeah and that's also a wonderful book and that's a little bit of a hint by the way wink wink our next episode uh is going to be about st joseph so maybe prepare your hearts by by doing the consecration uh and then do you want to say something branded about because i know something you and i spoken uh of before getting to know a particular saint during the season of lent yeah i think on a past episode i specifically encourage this um i got this lesson actually from bishop baron who recommends that during both advent and lent that you get to know closely a particular saint and you do that in several ways you read a biography of them if they've written prayer or poetry you bring that with you to the chapel and you use that as a source of prayer if they've written diaries or journals you get deep into those and then ultimately you talk to them you ask their intercession you reside with them you become friends with them um i think there's there's hardly a better way to use a lent than to grow deeper into the communion of saints which is ultimately the mystical body of christ himself so i think fondly over the years of different lengths there was one lens where i got to know saint therese very well one lint with pierre giorgio one lint was saint paul i had a really profound mystical experience at prayer one year i think five or six years ago with paul that really made a difference in my life bishop baron always likes to add the advice though um pick a saint maybe you could pick a saint that's similar to you or you know that's a line to your interest so i know a lot of young people in their in their 20s and 30s are drawn to pierre giorgio because he's a young guy he's a mountain climber he's a college student he's he's in the world so you can relate to him right but there's also value in growing close to a saint who's utterly different in lifestyle vocation temperament prayer style there's something about that um edge that sharpens you and kind of fills in the gaps of your own you know temperamental or spiritual life um so i've i'm trying to think of of some specific examples you know i i spent a couple of years um therese is one example and then i think i did there was another nun i did as well there's just like there's so many dimensions of therese's life that i just can't sympathize with you know being a cloistered carmelite nun that's so different from my experience of having seven young kids run around everywhere i go you know uh but there's also something that she helped in me to refine which was this deep spiritual contemplative quietness the little way the the closeness almost playful relationship that she has with christ and his mother all that i got from her and it was mainly because she's unlike me you know she she helped to soften the edges and refine um some areas that that a similar saint wouldn't have touched so i do recommend that and then i'll toss it back to you i know um one thing you got me to read last year it was part of my spiritual reading last year was saint basil's commentary on feasting and fasting which i'll just say best book i've ever read on fasting period i've read maybe three or four books there's not actually not a lot of good catholic books on fasting so if you're a writer listening to this that's a gap we need to fill hasn't been a lot of good catholic books i've read some good ones by evangelicals but uh saint basil you know way back in gosh what was he third fourth fifth century something like that um wrote it's a it's a series of of uh homilies that he's given on feasting and fasting um and i know you've you've read that more than once and you had a great post at word on fire about it as well yeah yes and that's all i was going to say if you want to hear more about that definitely read that blog a post that i wrote on the reflections of saint basil again bar none one of the best writings on fasting in church history from a great theologian of the church but um that's and it's very readable by the way it's not like a long epic work i mean it's there's short little chapters on fasting and he goes through different parts of the sacred scriptures so very much worth reading i think you get it through saint vladimir seminary press i'm i'm you know ashamed of our latin right church that the russian orthodox are translating more church fathers than we are i'm like where's where's our publishers translating the church fathers but um but you know kudos to the russian orthodox for doing such a wonderful job because that series is fantastic i know that we suggested it a couple of times um on this podcast so yeah definitely read that article that i wrote it sort of highlights in a simple way in an introductory way the teachings of saint basil and then you can actually jump into the text itself all right well let's wind it down to a close here i'm going to include links to all of the books that we've mentioned i'll include a link to the word on fire post by father blake we just mentioned on fasting during lent i'm also going to include some links to two pdfs that father blake has created for his parish but feel free to download download them and use them yourselves one of them he already mentioned it was how to have a holy lint and it's essentially an examination of conscience based around those dimensions of prayer fasting and almsgiving so especially as we kick off lent that might be a good thing to do like today and you let those questions guide your prayer and ask let those questions sort of uh fill in your prayer to the lord where you're asking the lord what do you want me to do or to add or to change this lent now would be a really good time to do that and then do you want to say something about the second pdf it's titled the sacred tritium uh a home guide for families maybe talk about that for a second yeah that was brought on by pastoral necessity during the coven 19 pandemic because you had a lot of people who weren't able to come obviously to the holy week celebrations so i've been discerned and prayed about this as a pastor and actually worked with my mother to help put the booklet together herself being such a an amazing mom and she really had some great ideas for the sacred liturgy um and we put together this booklet that actually ended up being shared nationally thank god um a lot of families around the country used it that past uh this past year for holy week and it was just very um i'm thankful to god for it and what it is it's it's a home guide on how to celebrate the sacred triduum in your home so in addition to the sacred liturgy which we all should be attending during the triduum how do i also just celebrate the trudeau in my home how do i decorate my home uh what do i need for the for the liturgy of the word what are the gospels i need to read and everything's in that booklet fill more than free it's completely completely free you know you don't have to pay for it um fill more than free just download it and and to use it in your homes it really um it was a initiative of love of my own heart as a priest and i hope that it's able to help your families to celebrate a good linton season but especially a holy triduum excellent well with an hour and a half in the books we should probably take this to a close maybe we'll do one one final takeaway here father blake as we move into the season of lentz uh the one bit of advice that i think sums up everything that i've been able to offer during this episode comes from a good friend of mine bert ghezzy and he for you know he's he's a wise and spiritual master and uh he has i think very pivotally summed up my own philosophy toward lent he calls it the one one one recommendation and burt says every year i try to do this focus on one sin that god wants to purge or transform in me add one thing to your spiritual life and again we've given you a hundred possibilities in this episode you have to add them all maybe pick just one thing to add and then remove one barrier from your spiritual life something preventing you from maturing so focus on one sin add one thing and remove one thing so maybe that's a good framework i know for some people everything we just discussed in the past hour and a half is going to be too overwhelming you know there's just it's the fruit of many many years of practicing these lenten disciplines but maybe start with that maybe take everything you've heard and just pick out three things under that framework and commit to that for the next 40 days so that'd be my one practical takeaway how about you father blake yeah i have nothing to add to that really it's um remember that christ loves you he's calling you to holiness and everything we provide it for you are resources and tools to grow in that holiness and so instead of feeling overwhelmed which i know might be a temptation take it to heart discern and see about that one one one rule and allow jesus to really make this the most beautiful lint that you've ever had maybe up to this point we haven't had the best understanding of the season of lent or maybe a deep appreciation of it hopefully we do now after this podcast and we're able to enter fully into the season i promise you that if you do if you enter into the spirit of fasting authentically into the fear the spirit of prayer authentically with the liturgy as well as some private devotion and with the spirit of almsgiving it will transform your land like never before and more importantly it will transform your easter and the solemnities of the church like never before which is the ultimate point of lent in the first place so know that you're all in our prayers during this lenten season we will both be fasting praying and almsgiving with you and let us keep one another in the heart of christ as we go through the desert and seek the resurrected lord amen thanks for watching guys and we'll see you next month here on the borough shire podcast

Channel: The Burrowshire Podcast

Views: 1,680

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Id: p-kuD-ls_xU

Length: 95min 9sec (5709 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021