FASTING WITH THE PHARISEES

Friday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Many years ago, when I was a theological student (I said it was a long time ago), I was out at a Dallas restaurant a few days before the beginning of Lent. A couple of my friends had joined me, and we were enjoying one of our last fine meals before the season fell on us. We were having such a good time none of us saw Mr Super-Catholic until he presented himself at our table. We all knew him; none of us liked him. He had a tendency to flit from one parish to another, criticizing each for its failure to be sufficiently “Catholic” for his taste.

“Having a last steak dinner before Lent, huh?”

I don’t remember anybody responding, but he pulled up a chair.

“Giving up meat for Lent? Yeah, me too. That’s not the half of it, though. I can’t stand the way we keep such a pathetic fast. Ever since Pope Paul VI, the Western Church has forgotten how to fast. Now the Eastern Orthodox, they keep a real fast. Did you know they don’t eat meat or seafood or any kind of animal products at all during Lent? Not even cheese or eggs or any kind of animal derivatives. That’s serious fasting, I tell you! That’s what I’m doing this Lent.”

I don't remember any of the rest of the conversation. I probably wouldn’t even remember this much except for what followed.

About ten days later, not quite a week into Lent, the three of us went out to eat again. Still fresh and firm in our Lenten resolves, we each knew we could withstand the temptations of a good restaurant and find something—if not penitential, at least seasonally permissible—on the menu. While we waited to be seated, one of my pals nudged me. “Look over there,” he said sotto voce. “It’s the Uber-Catholic.”

And it was. Sitting by himself, he was carving himself a big bite from one of the most delicious-looking T-bones I’d ever seen. My concupiscent eyes lingered on the crisped fat along the meat’s edge, but even more, my concupiscent heart soared to see the Decider on All Things Catholic so obscenely violating the Fast—and not just the lilly-livered Western Fast, but the Great Orthodox Fast he’d embraced just a few short days before. A thick, juicy steak, a baked potato larded with mounds of butter, sour cream and bacon; was there any part of the fast he wasn’t breaking?

He saw us, too. Evidently we were all staring at him. He turned the color of a beet.

We were seated, and though none of us said anything about what we’d seen, we were each reaffirmed in our (self-righteous) fasting. The Super-Catholic was a hypocrite. Thank God we weren’t like him.

St John Chrysostom, the fifth-century Archbishop of Constantinople and one of the greatest preachers in the long history of preaching, preached a lot about fasting. “You fast from meat and chew up your brother?” he asks. “He who keeps the fast with his lips and judges and condemns his brother is keeping a sacrilegious fast. The Pharisee fasted and God turned away from him, but the Tax-collector, who didn’t fast but asked God for mercy, went away justified. Do not fast with the Pharisees…the virtue of fasting lies not in abstaining from food, but in fighting sin.” Mr Super-Catholic may have abandoned the Fast, but we kept it in the best tradition of the Scribes and Pharisees.

“Do you fast?” the Archbishop cries. “Prove it by what you do! If you see a poor man, take pity on him. Be reconciled to your enemy, be reconciled to him. If you see a friend gaining honor, lay envy aside. If you see someone attracted to you, turn your eyes elsewhere. Fast not only with your mouth, but also with your eyes, and ears, and feet, and hands, with your whole self. Keep the fast in your heart.”

It would make a good ending to say we invited the Uber-Catholic to share our table, but we didn’t. We went away feeling proved right. We each knew that guy was a big-mouthed fake. It took me a while to realize I was something much worse.