February 23rd, 2024
Surrender is a blanket word that we can get tired of hearing. However, I’ve learned that surrender is not an instant cure. Rather, it’s a word that constantly encourages us on the journey with, through and to the heart of the Father.
Today, we receive a gift in fasting. We get to surrender our appetites to God, that we may better learn to receive Him. Not to earn His love, but to give God more space to enter every fabric of our being, mind, body and spirit.
As we fast and abstain from meat today, remember why we are hungry.
We enter into today’s hunger pains to remember the one who jealously hungers for us. We do not fast to earn the love or company of the Divine with ascetical practices and almsgiving. We cannot earn the love of God, but we can learn to receive it. How? Surrender.
The prophet Ezekiel says: “Thus says the Lord GOD…‘Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair?’”
How unfair is it to God when we spend our days trying to fill ourselves up with other things? Things like food, entertainment, technology, adventure—none of which are inherently bad, but, without God, are empty. They mean nothing if they replace intimacy with God, who wants nothing more than for us to know Him and love Him with all our hearts, souls, and minds.
Our righteousness will never surpass that of the Pharisees if it is rooted in self-reliance. Saint Augustine tells us that we are totally dependent on God’s grace to be righteous. And Jesus comes today to give us that grace—the grace of His own self—the grace the psalmist longs for:
“My soul waits for the LORD
more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
Let Israel wait for the LORD.
For with the LORD is kindness
and with him is plenteous redemption.”
Let us pray, fast, give alms, and remember why we’re doing it. Wrestle in the desert! Like Jesus, may we let the Spirit drive us there and nourish us while the angels minister to us, the sons and daughters of God.
My name is Salem Farmand, and I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida in a big Catholic Palestinian and Lebanese household. I work full time in New York City at the Archdiocese of New York and am a singer/songwriter and worship leader.