NOTES for Rom 14:19-26

Preparation for Lent concludes with a reading of Christ's words, handed down to us by the evangelist Matthew, about what fasting and prayer are. In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord tells His disciples that fasting and prayer have meaning only in secret from people. Only when they become events in your deeply personal relationship with God and are visible to no one except God - only then do fasting and prayer have meaning. The Lord warns us about the subtle temptation to "appear to people to be fasting." In this time of fasting, our enemy really does tempt us with the desire to appear so that those around us will think (even if not out loud): "Ah, how devout, practically a saint..." This "Ah!" destroys the whole meaning of fasting. "Rend your hearts and not your garments," as we heard from the prophet Joel (Joel 2:13).

And today the Lord also speaks to us about prayer: do not heap up words like the Gentiles. Neither the length of a prayer nor the number of words said in it means anything. Only the movement of the soul toward God gives prayer its value. And today's reading ends with the Lord's Prayer. The apostles had the custom of saying this prayer three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. Without doubt, the apostles prayed beyond that, but these three times became for Christians a kind of spiritual frame on which the whole day - and all of life - rests.