Have you experienced a miracle in your life? I can honestly say that each one of us has. It is our life. It is an amazing miracle to be alive. There were many before us and there will be many after us. So what can we do with this wonderful miracle?
Our life has two main directions. The first is leading to God, and the second one comes out from the first-- we have to love our neighbor. And here is the challenge in this miracle--how can we love our neighbor if that person seems to be an enemy, doesn't respect us, or even worse, acts against us? This is going to be a very hard lesson today.
Do you remember when the apostles asked Jesus why they couldn't drive a demon out from a person?(Mt 17:19-21) Let's look at it. I noticed that since we've stopped looking seriously at fasting many things seemed to have gone wrong. For centuries every Friday was a day when we didn't eat meat. For centuries the fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday was very restricted and many people didn't eat at all those days. For centuries there was fasting before receiving Holy Communion. For some reason, step by step, those fasting times were slowly removed or came with tons of excuses not to follow them. We slowly forgot that some evil and demos can only be removed by fasting. We forgot that fasting helped us to keep self-discipline. When I look at the world, I can see that the more we have the more in trouble we are. Our tables are breaking under the weight of food, but it is so hard to give up something in the name of fasting. People will go on diets to lose weight, but they have a problem with fasting. I personally know people that go through extreme trainings, but they have a problem with fasting. Yes, fasting is difficult, because it is so powerful. It is so powerful that even Satan has to give up and fly away when someone is fasting.
I've said so many times that in God we trust. So if we trust in Him then we should be even more eager to suffer with him and fast with him. For the last few weeks I've been writing about the bad things happening in the world. We can change them through fasting and prayers. We can change the White House through fasting and prayers. Look at the gospel, some of those evil things require more than just "Our Father". We slowly are moving towards Lent. Let's use it as a time of fasting for this country, for our towns, for our families, for our children. By fasting we can change this world.