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Email a Friend“Good job!” has been an inside joke in my small social circle for the past year. If we catch each other spouting it out of habit rather than ture recognition, it elicitis a giggle.What we’re talking about is false praise, which is always detrimental to a child’s sense of self. Our culture has exploded with junk certificates, trophies, stickers and stars. It reminds me of a Max Lucado (no, he’s not Catholic) book and DVD called “You are Special”, which essentially attempts to teach the child that by virute of being a child of God, we are all “special” - unique and wonderfully made! What Alfie Kohn is trying to get across is the idea that what we do doesn’t always define us - even when we fail or fall miserably. Unconditional parenting doesn’t mean we don’t want to teach our children how to be “good”, it simply means that (like God) we can forgive and move on still loving.
There Was Fasting In Paradise
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 12:48 PM
The Holy Father has written us a letter to help us benefit fully from our Lenten practices.
Read it here, its main theme is fasting.
I love the way Benedict always starts with the practical before leading us to the sublime, and this letter is no exception. Rather than starting with pieties, he asks a blunt question about fasting: what good is it? Read the whole thing to find his answer, but I’ll highlight two ideas that jumped out at me.
Since we (or at least I) tend to think of fasting solely in terms of liberation from and reparation for sin, I found this observation surprising: In the very first pages of Sacred Scripture, the Lord commands man to abstain from partaking of the prohibited fruit:
“You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gn 2, 16-17). Commenting on the divine injunction, Saint Basil observes that “fasting was ordained in Paradise,” and “the first commandment in this sense was delivered to Adam.” He thus concludes: “ ‘You shall not eat’ is a law of fasting and abstinence” (cf. Sermo de jejunio: PG 31, 163, 98).”
So, while it’s true that fasting can help free us from disordered tendencies, its first instance was positive: as an expression of love for God.
Secondly, the Holy Father describes fasting as ordered towards the other traditional Lenten practices: prayer and almsgiving. This is because fasting opens us to “the other.” It makes us more spiritually sensitive.
Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word.
And it makes us more open to others.
Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger.
Isn’t that lovely? The letter concludes with his Lenten counsel for all of us, and grants us his blessing:
May every family and Christian community use well this time of Lent, therefore, in order to cast aside all that distracts the spirit and grow in whatever nourishes the soul, moving it to love of God and neighbor. I am thinking especially of a greater commitment to prayer, lectio divina, recourse to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and active participation in the Eucharist, especially the Holy Sunday Mass. With this interior disposition, let us enter the penitential spirit of Lent. May the Blessed Virgin Mary, Causa nostrae laetitiae, accompany and support us in the effort to free our heart from slavery to sin, making it evermore a “living tabernacle of God.” With these wishes, while assuring every believer and ecclesial community of my prayer for a fruitful Lenten journey, I cordially impart to all of you my Apostolic Blessing.
P.S. This photo is from the Pope’s Mass at Santa Sabina Church in Rome this morning.
Comments
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oh, how I wish the comments section had a spell check! Please forgive my terrible typos above!
and the fact that this was meant to post under “over-praising our Kids”! Ay, poetic justice. I shouldn’t be on the computer right now anyway! My fastin’ family is famished and I should be making pasta.
Rebecca-
Thank you for sharing this. This is my first year as a Catholic going through Lent, and last year during RCIA I had a newborn. Today was a struggle fasting. And, I did a modified version so I could keep up with my 1 and 2.5 year old daughters. I wouldn’t have found this letter from the Pope on my own.
Thank you.
Rebecca,
I love a devout Catholic with a great sense of humor!
I actually mentioned this post to my husband this morning. It is an important message from our Holy Father. Fasting has really gone “out of fashion” so to speak, and it’s value is lost on the general congregation. I have never really fasted due to the “easy-out pregnancy/nursing cycle for so many years and in the gap between the last two, I was lazy and uninformed.
This messgae from Pope Benedict is a gentle reminder that we must enter into the suffering of Christ and others as part of our Lenten experience.
THANKS!
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