Friday after Ash Wednesday 2020

God says to us through Isaiah: "Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, ... to share your bread with the hungry, ... and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" (Isaiah 58: 6a,7a, 7b). A retired, yet active man named Pete, beginning his seventh decade of life, has blood relatives who have benefitted from his work, counsel, and generosity over many years. They have sometimes turned their back on him, insulted him, "struck him with wicked claw" (Isaiah 58:4a), demanded more from him, abandoned their own responsibilities, and also complained, unjustly so, that he is the cause of their problems. Pete does not take offense or respond to them in kind, yet continues to visit them when they are sick in the hospital, offers consolation in varied forms, and defends them from those who gossip about them. In his becoming a living witness to God's words in Isaiah, in his own flesh, this man named Pete shows Christ's own self to others.

Moreover, God says through Isaiah, "Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly." (58:8a) True fasting, like Pete's, is accompanied by God's graces of light and healing. Each of us belongs to varied families of blood and of other life commitments. Being just, compassionate, generous, and merciful with our own "kin" requires God's grace. The harvest of putting that grace into practice offers light and healing to our mutual woundedness.