March 2025

As we begin the month of March we are already beginning the Great Fast. We tend to look at the Fasts as an inconvenience in our life, but the Great Fast is supposed to disrupt our life, and to make us realize how much we are distracted in this life and that we need to learn to rely on Christ and not the things of the world. Many of us will start the fast with good intentions. Then, as fast goes on, we start to lose focus, so we must pray and try to persevere and learn to trust Christ to help us through.

The season of the Great Fast and the Holy Week Fast is the time of preparation for the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. If we just go through the motions of the Fast, not really participating in it and then approach the Resurrection of Christ as just another Sunday service then we will have missed the opportunity to work on our soul and purify it. Without this proper preparation, the deeper meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and Resurrection are lost.

This is a time we should renew ourselves through: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is a time that we take a deep look into ourselves, which should bring us to repentance, to a real changing of our minds, hearts and deeds in obedience with Christ and his teachings. It is the time of our return to the great commandments of loving God and our neighbors. It is not easy to do, but with focus and with trust in Christ we can begin to live our life the way Christ intended us to.

We are all called to be perfect, as Christ says in Matthew's Gospel; Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. It is a struggle to fast for the 40 days but the spiritual benefit is great. Like Zaccheaus, it was a struggle for him to climb the tree, but in the end he was able to see Christ.

 Our job as human beings is to draw closer to Christ and fulfill His holy will, which is what we say every time we say The Lord’s Prayer. When we fast from foods, tv, radio, social media etc we are eliminating those things that prevent us from pursuing a relationship with Christ and, in this way, we are able to see those things that are sinful in our life. In other words, we should be trying to have that pure heart, as it says in the Beatitudes: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God!

The fast should be kept as best we can but not by the mouth alone but also by the eye, the ear, the feet, the hands and all members of the body. The eye must abstain from impure sights, the ear from malicious gossip, the hands from acts of injustice, it is useless to fast from foods, and yet to indulge in criticism and slander. It is our repentance that God desires, not our remorse.

We sorrow for our sins, but we do so in the joy of God’s mercy. We mortify our flesh, but we do so in the joy of our resurrection into life everlasting. We make ready for the resurrection during Great Lent, both Christ’s Resurrection and our own.

May we all have a spiritually beneficial Great Fast!

Fr. Mikel