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40 Shades of Lent by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday after Ash Wednesday, 07 March 2025 Isaiah 58:1-9 + + + Matthew 9:14-15
I love your words today, Lord God our Father through the Prophet Isaiah:
Thus says the Lord God: Cry out full-throated and unsparingly, lift up your voice like a trumpet blast; tell my people their wickedness, and the house of Jacob their sins (Isaiah 58:1-9).
So strong was the word your great prophet had used, "full-throated" which is to express confidently, with strong feeling and without limit; to shout our loudly in no uncertain terms; to mince no words, to emphatically declare what it really is.
O God forgive us, as a nation and as a church, as a community of your disciples for being so soft, so disturbingly quiet and selectively silent in denouncing injustice and abuses happening not only around us but even by those among us; we have been so lax, overly lenient, always trying to please everyone that we have forgotten to stand for you in Christ Jesus that so many among us your priests have abused your worship, your prayers, your liturgy.
Teach us to be like your tall trees, so magnificently imposing minus the pride and airs many of us exude; simply rooted and grounded in you, O Lord, firm and unshakeable, truly a presence in Christ.
Let us take the challenges of the Prophet Isaiah to see fasting not just as refraining from food and drink but about how our behavior affect others; let us empty ourselves first of the bonds of wickedness that bind us so that in our fasting we set the oppressed free by breaking every yoke (Is.58:6); let us be one with the hungry and homeless by realizing our nakedness in you, that more essential than food and things are those of the Spirit to experience you among the poor like the hungry and the homeless (Is.58:7); let us be your presence in this world by shouting full-throated not just with our voice but most especially with our actions and witnessing of your justice and love.
Loving Father, you have given us with so much and we have given so little if not nothing at all; teach us the essence of fasting which is to give more of ourselves with others and to give more of you and your love, and kindness, and mercy, and joy and life. Amen.
