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Gospel Reflection for Friday, March 7, 2025
When I was little, and we celebrated May in the religious school I attended, they gave us a little booklet where we had to write down the sacrifices we made each day in honor of the Virgin Mary. Filling out that booklet was a way of showing our love for her. It was also a way of accumulating merits before her and, given her closeness to God, before God Himself. This is how fasting and sacrifices have been understood in the Church for a long time. It is about accumulating acts that cause us pain or are difficult for us to do. This is how we fill our booklet throughout life. We express our devotion this way. For example, if we make a pilgrimage on our knees, it seems to have much more value –it is more sacrificial– than if we do it walking. And this way we accumulate merits before God to achieve our salvation or the forgiveness of sins.
But Jesus’ message is not about that. The Gospel speaks to us about God’s free love. We don’t need to earn merits to achieve anything before God. Salvation, forgiveness, life, is a free gift from God (this is something very hard for us to believe). Fasting is not the way to achieve anything before God. We do not need to mourn because the bridegroom, Jesus, is with us. We have Him present in the Eucharist.
If we want to fast, it’s better to listen to Isaiah in the first reading when he says: “This is the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke, to share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into your house, to cover the naked when you see them, and not to hide from your own kin.” In other words, fewer artificial sacrifices that lead us nowhere and more cultivating fraternity and getting closer to the poor and those who suffer. Less getting lost in trivialities and more focusing on what is fundamental: building the Kingdom with Jesus and with our brothers and sisters, without leaving anyone behind.