“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? … The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”
Our Lord answers a question about discipline with a metaphor about love. He does not explain fasting as a rule but as a romance. One fasts not because food is wicked, but because one longs.
The fast is not primarily about subtraction; it is about absence. It is the ache that proves affection.
Each day, I read a paragraph from the encyclical Dilexi te and weave a quotation from it into that day’s Lectio Divina.
Memorial in the Grotto of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The inscription says: “In memory of the death of innocence of the victims of clergy sexual abuse. When innocence dies…a life stops. It is essential that we never forget.”
For this very reason, we Christians must not abandon almsgiving. It can be done in different ways, and surely more effectively, but it must continue to be done. It is always better at least to do something rather than nothing.
As I stand beneath hope — the Centennial pillar for February, do I allow my hope to grow thin by neglecting charity towards those poor from our “serious mistake“, or will I let this season teach me that even if my fast feels small, I must not abandon almsgiving — choosing at least to do something rather than nothing, so that hope remains alive in action and not merely in intention?
Today I am not strictly called to fast in the full canonical sense — only to abstain from meat. And in truth, abstinence from meat in the Texas Panhandle is hardly the sackcloth of the prophets. Fish can be a delicacy here. Fried cod may cost more than sirloin.
If I wished to be severe, I would sit in the dim light with a bowl of beans and call it penance. Instead, I find myself cheerfully making the rounds of fish fries and parish Lenten meals.
There is something wonderfully Catholic about frying fish in fellowship. And yet there is also something suspiciously comfortable about it.
The tension lies here: fasting can become festive. Penance can become cuisine.
The danger is not that I will suffer too much; it is that I will build windbreaks against the very demands meant to sanctify me.
And beyond my plate lies a wider matter. We inhabit a culture that consumes swiftly and discards without ceremony. Paper is produced only to be thrown away. Resources extracted only to be exhausted. The earth herself fasts unwillingly while we feast.
The natural order, by contrast, wastes nothing. Plants feed animals; animals nourish soil; soil births plants. Creation itself practices a kind of circular fasting and feasting. Nothing is finally discarded.
But our industrial appetite does not know how to fast. It knows only how to accelerate.
And so my Friday abstinence begins to look less like a private dietary adjustment and more like a protest — a small refusal to join the tyranny of excess.
Yet I must admit: my heart sometimes fasts less than my stomach.
The Bridegroom has not been taken from me in despair, but He has been hidden. Lent teaches me to miss Him. And if I do not feel the absence, perhaps I have not yet fasted at all.
3. Contemplatio — Chestertonian Synthesis
fasting, rightly understood, is not grimness but gravity. It is the cheerful recognition that something greater is worth more than comfort.
Chesterton once delighted in feasts — but he delighted in them precisely because he knew the art of restraint. Only the man who can fast can truly feast.
The paradox is this: to fast is to say that food is good — but not ultimate. To abstain is to affirm abundance by refusing to worship it.
If the world has become a place of ceaseless consumption, then even the smallest fast becomes revolutionary. To deny oneself voluntarily is to announce that one is not enslaved.
The Bridegroom will return. The feast will come. But until then, the fast trains my appetite toward eternity.
The true fast is not from meat but from indifference. Not from flavor but from waste. Not from celebration but from forgetfulness.
4. Oratio – Prayer
Lord Jesus, Bridegroom of my soul,
Teach me to fast not out of pride, nor for appearance, nor for culinary substitution, but for love.
Let my hunger remind me of You. Let my abstinence awaken longing. Let my restraint protest excess.
Free me from the tyranny of appetite — whether of food, comfort, or opinion.
May my small Friday sacrifice train my heart for the eternal feast.
Amen.
5. Actio — In Light of Laudato Si’ and Synodality
In nature, however, this process is slow and cannot be compared to the fast pace induced by contemporary technological advances, even when the latter build upon several centuries of scientific progress.
Supporting parish community not merely as a consumer, but as a servant — perhaps volunteering at the fish fry rather than merely eating at it.
Synodality is walking together toward conversion. Even shared fish can become holy if shared in humility.
6. Song Pairing 🎵
🎶 “Friday is Fish Fry Day” — The Wiggles🎵
Even children know Friday changes the menu. Lent asks whether it changes the heart.
7. Movie Pairing 🎬
🎬Movie:Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Not every feast is holy. Discernment matters. The fast protects us from mistaking every banquet for a blessing.
Introvert + Apostle = Christian paradox unlocked. 🔓 Father Taylor Elzner explains how silence fuels mission, why labels aren’t boxes, and how to stop “communion to escape” and start living grace outward. Grace doesn’t delete your introversion — it perfects it! Introverts aren’t anti-social — we just need better WiFi with Heaven before mingling. This episode is introverted…but we make sure it is apostolic. 🌱
I’m sharing the latest episode of The Introverted Apostle, featuring guest Father Taylor Elzner, and this one struck me deeply. Father Taylor brings not just psychology, but theology to the conversation—looking at introversion through the lens of grace. He speaks about how God doesn’t merely tolerate our temperament; He sanctifies it. That insight alone reframes so much of my own journey. In particular, his reflections helped me understand why I guard my daily morning time of Lectio Divina so fiercely. What I once thought was simply preference may in fact be vocation—a way grace cooperates with silence, reflection, and interiority to bear fruit. If you’ve ever wondered why you are wired the way you are—or how your temperament fits into the life of the Church—this episode is well worth your time.
There is something wonderfully Catholic about meeting an old friend again and discovering he has become something new. The latest episode of CAPN – The WTC: The Podcast does just that. Ruben returns — but now as St. Ann’s Canyon youth director — and though he is young in years, his counsel for Lent is bracingly ancient. Fasting, prayer, sacrifice, intention. No gimmicks. No glitter. Just the sturdy timber of tradition. It is a delightful paradox: the young reminding the old how to walk the old road well. He also speaks plainly about why the CAPN Podcast Network matters for our Diocese — because evangelization today must travel where people are listening. If the Gospel once rode Roman roads, today it rides podcasts. Give it a listen. Whether you are young, seasoned (like me), or somewhere between — you may find Lent calling you deeper than you expected.
Photo used by permission of Douglas Kirkland/Corbis via Getty Images
Memorial in the Grotto of St. Mary’s Cathedral. The inscription says: “In memory of the death of innocence of the victims of clergy sexual abuse. When innocence dies…a life stops. It is essential that we never forget.“
I was one of “the few” Bishop Zurek spoke of in this letter. He first posted it in August of 2019, and in response to my, “calling out all the more“, he kept reposting it atop the diocesan news page until December 11, 2019. There it remains to this day.
Fr. Ed Graff, brought here from Philadelphia by Bishop Matthiesen, was arrested in 2002 for sexually assaulting a minor and died later that year in jail. Despite the harm linked to his ministry, he was buried in an honored section of Llano Cemetery among our pioneering clergy — a decision that continues to wound survivors and raise hard questions for our diocese.
Bishop Matthiesen, who rode the white horse of public activism even as he brought abusive priests into our diocese such as John Salazar—wounds that still mark us today. I spoke with him often, pleading with him to reconsider his “no regrets” about bringing those priests here…
Bishop Zurek, who told the Diocese of Amarillo he had “no facts” about the Philadelphia report even as Amarillo’s connection to that tragedy was headline news. When I continued to speak out, as Bishop Yanta had once urged me to do, he later wrote that I was not among the faithful and loyal disciples whom the Lord Jesus desires.
