The Asceticism of Love

Ash Wednesday

For many, today’s date is unmistakable and if you have a loved one, forgetting that it’s Valentine’s Day is unforgivable. But even if today doesn’t happens to be Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, our liturgical calendar actually honours two other saints, St Cyril and St Methodius, and not the eponymous St Valentine. Valentine’s Day has been largely relegated to a secular feast of mushy romantic ideals and practices.

Chocolates, flowers and candlelight dinners are things we normally associate with the secular representation of the feast of this Catholic saint who is patron of marriages and romance. The ascetic practices we practice in Lent and which we have heard in our gospel today, hardly sounds romantic at all, if anything, they seem utterly Spartan and ascetically bleak. But love is actually at the heart of these Christian ascetical practices. Love is never about seeking our own happiness but the happiness of the other even at the cost of sacrificing our own. It is this ascetical aspect of love which is missing from so many modern conceptions of relationships resulting in selfish individuals looking for love but finding none, at least none which perfectly matches this self-absorbed notion of romance.

Asceticism? “Isn’t that like wearing hair shirts and whipping and punishing yourself? Does the Church still teach that?” Simply put, asceticism means self-sacrifice. It means denying yourself physical pleasures and conveniences even when you don’t need to. What the Church requires are spiritual athletes not couch potatoes. Christians do not practice asceticism because we see physical goods as evil. On the contrary, asceticism guards against valuing the goods of Creation so much that we disdain the Creator. Like all spiritual practices, asceticism should be motivated by love. Asceticism does not spring from some form of sick masochistic self-hatred, but rather it is the sacrifice offered out of love for our Lord Jesus who showed the extent of His love for us by dying for us.

As we begin our Lenten ascetic practices of prayer, fasting and alms giving, let us be conscious of the true reasons for our actions.

First, asceticism combats habitual sin. If you struggle to control your desire for something you tend to abuse (food, drink, sex, comfort, etc), practising self-denial is like building your spiritual muscles against it. St Paul writes, “I discipline my body and make it my slave” (1 Corinthians 9:27). The word here for “discipline” carries violent overtones, literally meaning “to beat” or “to batter.” We’re called to show our body who’s boss. The purpose of fasting, for instance, is so that one can train his appetites by habitually telling them “No,” even in regard to lawful earthly goods, like food or conjugal relations. That way, when a sinful temptation stirs up the appetites, the body has been well-trained to obey its master, the sanctified rational mind.

Second, asceticism builds the virtue of temperance. Temperance is the virtue that balances our desires for physical goods. When our desires are out of balance (a condition of Original Sin called “concupiscence”), we need to reset the balance with self-denial. Our Lord Jesus teaches us: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21)

Third, asceticism protects you against the excesses of the culture. Like the culture the early Christians lived in, our modern culture has deified entertainment, luxury, and physical pleasure. While Christians can give lip service to resisting these temptations, the truth is that we’re immersed in this culture and it’s difficult not to be transformed by it. Asceticism helps us to set our hearts on the greater goods and to resist laxity of heart and open our hearts to be transformed by grace.

Fourth, asceticism moves our hearts away from selfishness. We live in air-conditioned comfort, even in our cars. We get used to having entertainment literally at our fingertips. Everything in our lives is built around convenience, entertainment, and comfort. Self-sacrifice prevents our modern lifestyle from sinking too deeply into our hearts.

Fifth, asceticism can be an act of love. If fasting and making other sacrifices are going to make you more cranky and irritable, if you continue to judge your neighbour for their lack of devotion or dedication to these ascetic practices as you have, then you have missed the point. These practices should enlarge our hearts, not shrink them. To know whether we’ve been doing it right is to examine the fruits of our practices. Have we grown in our love for God and neighbour?

Sixth, asceticism should lead us to interior conversion rather than multiply our practices as a kind of performance. Let us pay heed to the warning of our Lord Jesus Christ in the gospel, that we should not practice asceticism so that “men may see you” but rather, be content that “your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.” Asceticism provides us with new lenses to see things unlike how the world sees. St Paul puts it this way: “We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

In our consumeristic and materialistic culture, this programme of spiritual exercise is both unpopular and difficult. If these practices sound intimidating, think of the physical regiment many people keep to stay fit and healthy. If one can endure such hardships for a temporal good, a healthy life, one must then appreciate the value of spiritual exercises that will gain us, with God’s grace, eternal life. These habits of self-denial, which include prayer, fasting and almsgiving can strengthen us, by God’s grace, to aim our desires at unseen realities and reap the radiant joys of heaven, even now. When done out of love, instead of burdensome obligation or as performance, these ascetic practices will do much to help us advance spiritually. This is the path of spiritual athleticism and Lent is as good a place as any, to start our training.