Lent stands on three pillars, a tripod as it were: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. Let me try to explain each of them.

First, let us look at fasting and almsgiving. Although I will not directly speak about almsgiving, it becomes clear as you go to nos. 5-10 in the list below. They are about almsgiving. There is a partnership between fasting and almsgiving.

Someone asked me: “Father Raymond, abstaining from eating meat is not a problem for me. And at sixty, I can still do some acts of Lenten fasting.” Fasting in our Catholic tradition is understood as limiting oneself to one full meal and not eating meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. If you are not yet 18 years old or are already 60, you are exempted from fasting. Here are some suggestions I have gathered from different sources that moves beyond just not eating meat:

1. Look at fasting in a different way. It is not a punishment or a degradation of the body. The human body is good because God took flesh in Jesus. Thus, all things created by God are holy if used with God’s purpose in mind.
2. Look at fasting as enhancing our preparation for feasting. A good appetite allows us to enjoy the earthly gifts we were given. We need to learn to be deeply joyful as much as we need to learn healthy, constructive suffering.
3. Fast from immediate gratification. Take a moment to reexamine cravings and hungers, yearnings, compulsions, and impulses as natural and right but in need of being fed at the right time and appropriate amount.
4. Examine your diet and resolve to make the necessary changes if it is not healthy. Examine your eating habits and change them if you eat impulsively, constantly, too fast, unconsciously or without savoring your food, with disinterest, without care or dignity. Return a sense of the sacramental to mealtime in your household. Take time to eat your meal (The average family eats a whole meal in five minutes!).
5. If you have no difficulties with your meals or mealtime and food is not a neurotic issue with you, consider other ways of “fasting.” During Lent we ask ourselves: What does my baptism cost me? Surely it asks us to fast from our sinful behaviors.
6. Fast from selfishness and stinginess. Be extravagant in acts that are beautiful in God’s eyes. Be generous with what you have and what you can do for others.
7. Make a Lenten collection box to set on the table. Label it: “The Fasts of the Rich are the Feasts of the Poor”. The money you save by eating sparingly, not dining out, foregoing meats, can be graphically transferred into alms. Bring a meal to someone who needs it.
8. Fast from compulsive consumerism. Check your closets, cupboards, storage rooms and garage. How many items have you collected that you thought you needed— until you got them home and had “buyer’s remorse?” In reparation, choose some of these areas in your house to clean out. Give these items to those who need them more than you do.
9. Examine the ways in which you consume and waste, using up nature’s resources and adding to landfills or air/water pollution. Examine how you waste your time and other’s as well. Why not use your time to attend some spiritual exercises during Lent like the Stations of the Cross or Daily Eucharist.
10. Find ways to volunteer in our parish or in other outreach programs. Our parish needs choir members, ushers, readers, altar servers. We have groups in the parish that visit the sick and help the senior members of the parish. Why not take part in them?

You don’t have to do all of them. The important thing is that we do some Lenten fasting. I give the last word on fasting this Lent to Pope Leo, Bishop of Rome, who once wrote:

The sum total of our fasting does not consist in merely abstaining from food. In vain do we deny our body food if we do not withhold our heart from wickedness and restrain our lips so that they speak no evil. We must so moderate our rightful use of food that our other desires may be subject to the same rule. They therefore who desire to do good works, let them not fear that they shall be without the means: since even for given two pennies, the generosity of the poor widow of the Gospel was glorified!

Let us now look at prayer as an essential part of our Lenten practices.

Prayer is important whether during Lent or outside of it. But during Lent we are asked to intensify our prayer life, together with fasting and almsgiving. We need to give more time for prayer during Lent because it could draw us closer to God.

Sometimes we find praying difficult because we see it only as sayings things to God. Prayer is not only about lifting words to God. It is about opening our hearts and minds to God. We don’t need many words to do that. Just be still in God’s presence and allow Him to speak to you. Listen more, speak less. But if you find it difficult to pray without words, keep them short and keep saying them with a sincere heart. Here are some of them: “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner,” “Show me the right way, Lord,” “Change my heart, Lord, according to your will.”

The Eucharist is the best prayer we have. There Jesus speaks to us in the scriptures proclaimed and is present to us in the bread and wine transformed into his very self. During this Lent, find time to pray more, it is one habit that is good to have. Exert effort to do fasting. It creates space for others in your life especially those who have less in life. Thus, you don’t only give alms, you give yourself.