The Spirit of Lent (Lent begins on 17th Fobruary)

Prayer

"Pray to your Father."

The Lenten season calls us to pray. But prayer, Jesus teaches, is much more than saying words. "Go into your room, and close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. "

Before you pray, enter the inner room of your heart. Shut the door to the noise, the trivialities, the countless cares grabbing for attention. Put them aside. In the quiet place of your heart, with faith as your guide, speak to your God. A gracious Father listens, and he knows what you need.

Fasting

"When you fast do not look gloomy," Jesus says. Today's consumer society looks on fasting itself as gloomy. Urging everyone to eat, drink, and buy more and more, our world today has made fasting unfashionable.

Yet the gospel message says more and more can ruin human life. An acquisitive spirit is a selfish spirit And as the alarming numbers of people addicted to rugs and alcohol today prove, the taste for too much can destroy.

Food and drink, clothes and amusements - the good things of life - can turn into your captors, Jesus teaches. In our acquisitive, pleasure orientated society, fasting is a way of keeping ourselves free.

This Lent, recognising the hold things have on us, let us try, with God's help, to keep them in their right place. Some reasonable abstaining from food, drink and entertaimments can help us do that.

Indeed today we have new compelling reasons for taking fasting seriously. As the resources of our planet are increasingly threatened, it becomes clear that the family, especially those living in affluent nations, can no longer be unlimited consumers. We must develop a leaner, less wastefid way of life, if our planet is to survive.

Can the Christian teaching on fasting lead us to a gentler style of living on planet earth?