Abstinence and the road to Salvation: Homily for the First Sunday of Lent

There is a Portuguese proverb which goes “o peixe morre pela boca” (it is by its mouth that the fish dies). As with the proverbial fish, so too with Adam, our first parent, who though created to not experience death, but to live forever in the embrace of the Father, encountered death through his consumption of the forbidden fruit. And so, Origen (c. 185–c. 253), one of the important early theologians of the Church, teaches us that it was the temptation of gluttony that led Adam to sin.

As the Devil tempted Adam, so too did he try to tempt the second Adam, Our Lord Jesus Christ, with gluttony. Knowing that Our Lord had not eaten for forty days, and that He was now hungry, the tempter says:

“If you are the Son of God,
command this stone to become bread.”

However, the second Adam, Our Lord, did not descend to this earth so that He could repeat the errors of the first Adam. On the contrary, He came to initiate the great re-set, He came to recapitulate, or start again, so that the error of Adam could be set right and humanity – the children of Adam – could learn how to avoid falling prey to the Devil, avoid death, and thus have eternal life.

And so Our Lord teaches us that the response to the vice of gluttony, and part of the road to salvation, is abstinence. In so doing, he teaches us the discipline not just for Lent, but for the Christian life. As Cyril of Alexandria, a Father of the Church, taught: “By eating we were conquered in Adam, by abstinence we conquered in Christ.”

Last week, after reading my homily for Ash Wednesday, where I described Lent as the pursuit of love, a friend of mine responded: “I love ‘pursuit of love’! [But,] I can’t get behind the ‘abstinence & sacrifice.’”

This friend of mine was articulating a common problem in our times; we don’t seem to understand the value of abstinence. Last week, on Ash Wednesday, I had suggested that the disciplines of Lent should be seen as exercise, spiritual exercises for a soul that is fit, and can fight the tempter when he should appear. Abstinence is a part of this exercise regime, and it should ideally start with small sacrifices, abandoning things we like. For example, I really like tendli (gherkin) pickle, which was on the table on Ash Wednesday. It would have made no difference to my material life had I eaten a little portion of it, but abstaining from it, and postponing the pleasure that it would give me, was the exercise I decided to undertake.  As Our Lord says:

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. (Lk 16:10)

Brothers and sisters, though the first temptation Our Lord faced refers to the mouth, it denotes all the sensorial organs and the pleasures that they desire. That the mouth is the gateway to more than just gustatory desire I can very easily demonstrate through a personal anecdote. I had gone, some decades ago, to view the jewels of the Nizam, and faced with rubies, diamonds and emeralds the size of my fist, I experienced the very odd desire to physically eat them. These stones appealed to me like luscious fruit. In other words, my mouth was watering, not for some gustatory pleasure, but as a visceral response to the desire that the pleasures that jewels could bring. If the mouth is the gateway to desire, then the mouth should be trained to desire what is good.

The verse before the Gospel captures well what should be in our mouths when it says:

One does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.

Our mouth should be full, of the word of God. As King David sings in the psalm (104: 33):

I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;
    I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

One can do this by constantly having an ejaculatory prayer in one’s mouth.

              “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.”

              “Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in You.”

“I love you, Jesus; my love above all things; I repent with my whole heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt.”

With our mouth full of these prayers, constantly repeating them, so too will our heart. As Saint Paul teaches us today in the second reading:

The word is near you,
                        in your mouth and in your heart
—that is, the word of faith that we preach—,
for, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead,
you will be saved.

Abstinence does not mean, my dear brothers and sisters, that we reject the cornucopia that is placed before us. It requires only that we moderate our response to it, and that we recognize its place in our lives. An example of how to deal with the resources Our Lord has provided us is available in the first reading. Here Moses instructs Israel that having harvested the produce of the land overflowing with milk and honey, they place it in a basket and offer it to God, recognizing that it was God who gave us these gifts and it is to Him that we must return it.  In other words, recognize that these resources are not ours to consume as we wish, stuffing ourselves silly with them, but gifts to be used for the common good.

Abstinence is necessary spiritual exercise dear brothers and sisters, and something we can, and should, practice throughout Lent, increasing the things we abstain from, the closer we approach Good Friday. May St. Joseph the model of temperance aid us in our spiritual exercises this Lent and always.

St. Joseph, model of temperance, highest among the virtuous, pray for us.

(This homily was prepared to be preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 3 March 2025.)

(Image reference: The Temptation of Christ detail , Juan de Flandes, 1500 1504, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.)

The Pursuit of Love: Homily for Ash Wednesday

When I was a little boy, Lent was seen as the period of sacrifice, and where there was a tendency to keep a long face. It was a season of privation and one was not encouraged too much of mirth. Mirth was the domain of Carnaval which must not intrude into Lent.

I think there is a great value to this approach to Lent, but later in my youth I also encountered the Muslim attitude to Ramzan – incidentally Ramzan is ongoing, and so this Lent, we will be fasting alongside our Muslim brothers. If the attitude towards Lent in my childhood was one of sighing, and grudging, because we would be giving up alcohol, meat, chocolates and other things we like, I was surprised to realise that for the Muslims, Ramzan is a period of joy. One looks forward to Ramzan, and the fasting that accompanies it. Of course, unlike us who abstain through the entire period of Lent, they also feast after the fast. Having encountered this Muslim attitude, I realized that I had to change something about my attitude to Lent, that I had to look forward to it with joy and say when Ash Wednesday arrives, “Welcome, oh blessed season of Lent!”

And there is a good reason for us to do so, for not only are we preparing for the great, the biggest, feast of Easter, but in the process, Lent opens up a period of great opportunity for us.

A couple of days ago I chanced upon a video on social media of a Carmelite foundation, and they referred to Lent as “the pursuit of love.” This formulation of the season of penitence, abstinence and prayer, made me stop and think, this is what Lent is. At the very end of Lent we have Good Friday, which is the expression of the greatest act of love; a sinless man suffers a torture, shame, and a cruel death, so that ungrateful sinners – and the fact is, too many of us are still ungrateful and uncaring – may receive the greatest gift of the Father’s love, eternal life at His side.

If Lent is about this responding to this act of love, therefore, we cannot approach it with anything else other than an attitude of joy.

One more thing, the fasts and abstinence of Lent is not a bitter pill that we must swallow once a year. If this is going to be our attitude to Lent, then we are not going to make much spiritual progress. The abstinence of Lent should not be a prelude to gluttony starting from Easter Sunday. Avoiding pornography through this holy forty days, should not lead me to excitedly return to it on Easter Sunday and thereafter. Rather, the exercise of Lent should prepare me to eventually stop pornography altogether, even if it takes a few years, or place that consumption in its proper place – eat meat just once a week, for example.

Guided by love, we realise that the fasts of Lent are, in fact, exercises to help us gain true freedom. Many of us might look at the fasts, and prohibition of Lent, as curbing our freedoms, but in fact, these exercises, like any kind of exercise, actually places a regime on us that allows us to be freer. Once we are free of the vices, and the excesses, of our regular lives, we can more easily turn to a life of Christian virtue, and more easily open our hearts up to Our Lord, who wants nothing more than to be with us, both here and in heaven. As we hear in the first reading today:

Even now, says the LORD,

return to me with your whole heart,

with fasting, and weeping, and mourning

I normally end my homilies recommending a little ejaculatory prayer that should accompany us all the time. Today, at the start of this great season of Lent I recommend to you the words of the great St. Alphonsus Ligouri, which echoes the response of the psalm:

I love you, Jesus; my love above all things; I repent with my whole heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again.

Let these words strengthen you whenever you are tempted away from your Lenten discipline and from the great feast of love that awaits all of us at the end of this blessed period.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Caranzalem on 5 March 2025.)

(Image reference: “Santa Face”, El Greco, 17^th cent. Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon.)

Hail Mary, Full of Grace: Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

There are always at least two ways to read sacred scripture. The first is the literal, and the second, the spiritual. Of the two, the spiritual is always the more important. Today, we are offered plenty of opportunities to read the lectionary spiritually to reflect on the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

Our Lord himself teaches us how to read scripture spiritually. Recollect the many times when Our Lord referred to His Mother indirectly. For instance, His reference to His Mother when he rhetorically asked “Who is my mother?” and responded that “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt 12:46-50). Or the episode in the Gospel according to Luke, where when a woman praises “the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you,” Our Lord responded, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Lk 11: 27-28). In both these cases, Our Lord was not rejecting His mother, but further esteeming Her, indicating that She did the will of His Father, and heard the word of God and obeyed it.

And so, we know He is referring to Himself, and His blessed Mother when we hear the following words of Our Lord in the Gospel today:

A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.

We know that Our Lady is the good tree that has borne, not rotten, but good fruit. Recollect, dear brothers and sisters, that we routinely refer to Our Lady as having borne good fruit. At least once a day, devout Catholics throughout the world, pray “and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”

We could also refer to the first reading today, from the book of Sirach, where we read:

The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had

Indeed, we know that Our Lord, was the fruit of a tree that received special graces from God the Father, who preserved Our Lady from the stain of original sin so that she could be the pure vessel that bore His Son.

The arboreal references do not stop at the fruit alone. The verses 13-14 from psalm 92 read:

The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,
            like a cedar of Lebanon shall he grow.
They that are planted in the house of the LORD
            shall flourish in the courts of our God.

These verses from the psalm have also found their way into Marian imagery, both these trees used as allusions to Our Lady, and sometimes found in traditional depictions of Her.

This reference to pictorial depictions of Our Lady allows us to read some of the verses from the second reading, St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, in an interesting manner. In this letter, St. Paul says:

When this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about

There is an image of the sacred hearts of Our Lady and Our Lord which is commonly found in many households in Goa, and across the Catholic world. This image features an image of Our Lady wearing a red tunic and a blue cloak, while Our Lord wears a blue tunic and a red cloak. The use of these colours, and their inversion, is not simply some random artistic choice but the result of deep iconographic reflection. Red represents the colour of the earth, of mud, and thus corruptible humanity; while blue is the colour of the sky, and thus heaven. For this reason, Our Lady, who though born of, and with, corruptible human flesh, was clothed with incorruptibility, and assumed into Heaven by Her Son, is represented as having a red tunic and cloaked with blue, the colour of immortality (as is the case in the image by Jacopo Palma that I have used above). Our Lord, on the other hand, was of heaven, and hence had a blue tunic, and humbled himself to take on our mortality, which is represented by the red colour of his cloak.

The verses from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that I just referred to, go on to quote the famous lines, which refer to the bodily Resurrection of Our Lord:

Death is swallowed up in victory.
                        Where, O death, is your victory?
                        Where, O death, is your sting?

The sting of death is sin,

These words, however, apply just as much to Our Lady, who, because she was sinless, was assumed into heaven, and now enjoys the privileges of heaven in her glorified body. And this is the true fruit that we must be grateful for, the privilege of having the possibility to be united with our bodies after death and be in the presence of God. Our Lady, as the ideal human, was the first to enjoy this fruit, born from the Tree of the Cross, and Her assumption into heaven is assurance that this is an opportunity available to us all.

This is an opportunity available to us all because Our Lady was sinless, not only because of the special grace that had been given to Her by God the Father, but because She added to this grace through Her own actions. Listen to the words from Sirach:

Praise no one before he speaks,
for it is then that people are tested.

It also says:

As the test of what the potter molds is in the furnace,
so in tribulation is the test of the just.

Our Lady is worthy of praise, because when faced with a choice presented to Her by the angel Gabriel, rather than think of the tribulations She would face, She responded with a wholehearted yes! As to why, and how, She responded with a wholehearted yes, once again we can refer to Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel:

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

And where did this goodness come from? We can turn once more to art for our answer. Our Lady is commonly depicted as being in prayer when She was approached by the angel Gabriel, and once again the words of the psalm we read today can be used to understand the discipline she followed so that Her heart was a store of goodness:

It is good to give thanks to the LORD,
            to sing praise to your name, Most High,
To proclaim your kindness at dawn
            and your faithfulness throughout the night.

Life does not always deal us fairly, my dear brothers and sisters, and this is the result of the operation of sin in the world. However, we have the option to take those proverbial lemons and convert them to lemonade through the simple process of trusting in and thanking God for every trial that comes in the nighttimes of our lives (and remember, the night is always darkest just before dawn). This was the way of Our Lady and this is why we sing Her praise today.

(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary, Fatorda on 2 March 2025.)

(Image reference: Detail of “The Assumption of the Virgin,” Jacopo Palma (Il Vechio), 1513, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice.)