“FASTING IN LENT
TO FEASTING IN EASTER”
Genesis 2.
15-17; 3. 17-19,21,24
The Thursday of
Invocavit: Lent Midweek Mass I
26 February Anno
+ Domini 2015
Fr Jay Watson
SSP
In The + Name of Jesus
It’s dirty and sad and it’s only going to
get worse.
Welcome
fellow Israelites, Sons of God, to Lent. Yes, Lententide 2015 in the Church’s
calendar, but more importantly to your desert wandering under The Cross of The
Crucified—the brazen serpent upon the pole.
Gaze at Him, i.e. believe, and
be healed!
The Lord is Lord of Life. The life The Trinity desired for all of you,
for Adam, was to be filled with pure unadulterated communion—in all its perfect
fullness. There was to be food so
delectable, nourishing, and transcendent, we cannot even speak of it now…we’ve
lost the agricultural specifics of Eden’s cornucopia from Genesis 1 and 2…it’s
not recorded. But “oh!” what it must have tasted like!
How long did your first Father and Mother
eat of God’s bounty before their perfidy and treason; before their attempted
murder of Goodness and Peace? How did that manna become “not enough?”
Not only are the Reformed “off the mark” in trying to do theology
in the “inner mind” of The Trinity,
basing the world’s working on sovereignty and divine providence, but so too,
are all Christians sinful when trying to reason and rationalize the mysteries
of creation, Eden, or the fall, apart from what The Lord reveals through
Moses in Genesis.
Adam and Eve had God’s food to eat. All was
good. And then THEY sinned. They looked at themselves in a false and
distorted satanic fun-house mirror and saw a lie. They craved spiritual anorexia and bulimia
and vomited out the Word!
You may have foodstuffs on your table every
day, three times a day, but you are so hungry for God’s food that you’re
wasting away—bodily. The wages of sin is
death. God never stopped loving and
caring for Adam “…did the Lord God make
coats of skins, and clothed them,” but Adam returned to the dust
nonetheless.
Your ingestion of sin is caused by the
devilish tapeworm, the “old Adam”
parasite within you, craving all that is from the world, the fallen flesh, and
the dragon. Repent. Turn from this heart/hell burn of
indigestion. Or, as The Lord’s spotless Bride has always taught, because He so
teaches, Fast! Fast from sin. Fast from sin by fighting against daily sins
in thought, word, and deed. Be who you
are—new Adams and new Eves in The New Adam, Christ Jesus. Clothed in His robes, drenched in His
Blood—His Life; eating His food—His Body; you fast both spiritually—but
actively with your sanctified will struggling to walk The Path. But you also, especially during Lententide,
fast physically to focus and sharpen you appreciation for His Word; and His
Word in Holy Supper.
No professor, teacher, or public speaker
wants to give his class or presentation at 1pm…after the lunch
hour. Post mid-day gluttony on carbs and
sugar finds most classrooms, auditoriums, and yes, naves, filled with dozing,
fat, lazy, and non-attentive warm bodies…i.e.
sinners who already shun the Word on their own, and don’t really need any
additional help from gorging on offal.
But, fast for a bit, let your stomach tell your self-deluded brain
(bondage of the will!) that you hurt, that the emptiness in your pit presages
death itself, and then, the spiritual mind that The Lord has placed into your
cranium begins to sharpen in focus on The Word…or at least, more so J
This isn’t a Law, this is Pauline
exhortation.
Eat less, well, that will be good for you
and, you’ll die anyway. But eat less,
and read Holy Scripture more carefully and your soul will be fortified for the
hard desert wounds and losses to come.
Attend Sunday’s Mass with an empty stomach and though wafer thin, and
Australian mediocre, that Eucharistic taste of God’s Body and Blood will be all
the more sweet.
The Lord gives daily bread. But where do you acknowledge that as His
family? Sure, you pray the Our Father multiple times during the day—hopefully
before each meal. But as His Holy Bride,
the Our Father with that typological
4th petition, is prayed every Mass right before The Verba Christi—the very Words of Jesus in
His consecration of bread and wine. You
daily bread is His true Body and real Blood.
Noah, and all those aboard God’s Ark, were
given to eat and be sustained during their watery Lent, their desert of waves
and salt, upon the food that The Lord had them set aside. You too in this tiny Ark, are given to eat—to
feast, and given to drink—to be toasted with the Cup of Thanksgiving, the very
medicine of immortality and festive nuptial meal of Peace.
It’s dirty and sad and it’s only going to
get worse…for a while…Lent will end.
Easter, JESUS for you, with you, and in you,
is forever.
In The Name of The Father and of The + Son and of The Holy Ghost
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