Fasting and Prayer 

Following the Church’s Lenten tradition, should a participant choose to fast, Sundays are not counted as fasting days. Fridays, during Lent are traditional fast days, and if you are able to fast, these are days when all Catholics choose to limit what they eat and drink. Some may even choose to limit their intake of food to just bread and water. Whether and how you fast is up to you depending on your health and what you are able to tolerate. Fasting in both variety and amount of food and drink one intakes is important for strengthening one’s will power. It is a means of exercising one’s will and mental control over one’s physical needs that strengthens you, not only mentally, but spiritually. As you adhere to your choices concerning what you eat and drink and the amount you eat and drink, you strengthen yourself mentally and spiritually. As you avoid eating or drinking certain things, there is some small measure of suffering that you bear, but by sticking to what you have chosen to do, you strengthen your will power as you stay on your fast. To gain maximum mental and spiritual benefit from the fasting you do, you should offer your fasting up as a prayer.  Fasting using bread and water only, or eating only a small portion of peanut butter on bread are only suggestions. There are many ways to fast and abstain from food and drink and the other worldly pleasures that are beneficial ways of strengthening your will power. You just have to choose something that will work for you. Fasting also helps to raise one’s ability to resist temptations by virtue of the strength of character one gains by making efforts to forego eating and drinking.  Abstinence works similarly in that by forgoing certain favorite foods and drinks, or limiting the amount of food you eat and liquids you drink, you help yourself build up your strength to resist temptations and to control your bodily urges.  

Fasting from Use of Electronic Media 
All participants to the 40 Day Contemplative Challenge are encouraged to fast from watching TV. Also, participants are encouraged to fast from using your computers, iPad, and phones, particularly to play games, watch videos, or use unnecessary apps. Use of social media is also something we encourage you give up or limit. Avoidance of these forms of electronic media will not be easy, but it is encouraged because for the most part these are attention grabbers and time sinks that pull folks away from being present in the current moment. Electronic media focuses one’s attention on the demands placed on you, not only by the apps that send you notifications to encourage you to use them, but also by people who are not who you have currently in front of you. Watching TV, for instance, focuses your attention away from the other people in the room. Limiting the time you use electronic media will help you embrace silence and encourage prayer. The 40 Day Contemplative Challenge has as one of its prayer goals to encourage the participants to have an encounter with the Living God, and while no one knows when or if this will come, we hope you will use your silent time away from electronic media as a means of encouraging a big return in your feeling closer to God. 

Meditative, Silent, and Contemplative Prayer
As far as prayer: Our 40 Contemplative Challenge is centered on encouraging folks to pray the Rosary on a daily basis. The Rosary a vocal form of prayer, but it also is a gateway to meditative prayer. As participants pray the Rosary, over these 40 Days use each mystery that you pray as a means of inserting yourself in the room with Mary as the Angel Gabriel greets Mary, or at the foot of the Cross as Jesus is crucified. Such forms of meditative prayer are transformative. 

The purpose of our daily reflections is to encourage participants to embrace using meditative prayer, as well as spending some time each day in silent or contemplative prayer. What we mean by spending time in silent prayer is simply this B spending time sitting prayerfully in silence and using silence as a way of listening with the ears of your heart waiting to encounter the Living God. Time in silent prayer is for most people a necessary prelude to contemplative prayer, which is gift from God. Embracing a daily practice of meditative and silent prayer is a sure way to help train one’s mind and your heart to encounter the Presence of God in the core of your being. In Father Thomas Keating’s poem entitled “Out of A Stone,” Father Keating speaks to what happens when one goes into prayer in the silence of one’s heart and lays our separateness from God aside. There, “The Divine Presence alone remains, And the Creator of all becomes all in all. The silence of the Creator is thunderous, drowning out everything else, and hiding in endless creativity.” God comes in the silence of your heart, but you are less likely to notice our silent God if you do not make a concerted regular effort silently wait for His coming.  

Meditative prayer is as important as silent prayer for most of us because it helps focus our very busy mind on the things of God. Still meditative prayer, just as vocal prayer is something that you do. In meditative prayer, one focuses one’s mind on a Scriptural scene like being present at the foot of the cross, and in that sense, you train your mind to quiet itself by placing before it the scene at the foot of the Cross as though you were there. Meditative prayer also uses silence as an aid to quieting one’s heart, which is something that may be a very important aspect for one to remain centered on Christ in the heart of all that is going on with this pandemic and all the other unnormal things that we have witnessed over the last year. Our reflections over the 40 Day Contemplative Challenge are intended to help participants to pray more effectively and to potentially come closer to encountering our Living God in our daily lives more fully. 

We will be praying for each of you!  
 

God Bless 
Cheryl Pilkington, Spiritual Director 
David Morgan, parishioner 
Deacon Joe Mills 
Deacon Jim Caldwell 

Return to 40 DLC Main Page