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As we enter Lent, we are invited to fast, give alms, and deepen prayer – but those are simply practices designed to help us reach the true goal: a relationship of truth with God and each other. I think there is a lot of confusion about fasting and almsgiving – because I know I got it wrong for a long time.

In Isaiah’s time, the people of Israel complained God didn’t seem to answer their prayers despite fasting and almsgiving. The passage tells us that the people were even trying hard to please God, but Isaiah was instructed to tell them why they were missing their mark. They were performing the acts of penance, but their hearts were still full of injustice and lacked conversion: driving their workers, leaving people naked and hungry, and even committing violence on one another. To go a step further, Jesus Himself tells us that there will be some who prophesy in His name and even drive out demons and performed miracles – but will still be rejected as having never known God. Why? Jesus gives us this parable:

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

⁹ To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ¹⁰ “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

¹³ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

¹⁴ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 18:9-14

At first, the Pharisee appears to be doing everything right – fasting, tithing on all his earnings as prescribed, and trying to live an upright life. There is not wrong with all that in itself. But Jesus tells us that this alone doesn’t justify us in God’s eyes. We see the Pharisee focused on how he is better than others around him – full of pride and silently judging others.

The modern version of this is saying, “I’m basically a good person – I don’t kill people or rob banks or anything.” If this is our response, we better take heed. Jesus is speaking to us too.

So is fasting, tithing, almsgiving worthless? No. Jesus is telling us that fasting and tithing without humility or while judging others is worthless. Fasting without repentance or conversion is worthless. Most of all, fasting and tithing without the purpose of connecting and reconciling your relationship with God is worthless.

Instead, we should fast and give alms with humility and the purpose of connecting ourselves with God spiritually. We should fast and give alms for the conversion of our hearts and as an offering for others. We should fast in ways to untie sin in our lives. We should stop behaviors that encourage others to sin. We should clothe the naked and feed the hungry at our door. We should help lose bonds of poverty, ignorance, fear, hunger, and illness to live justly with our fellow man.

Then our prayers will be heard and answered. But most of all, at the end of our lives we’ll find ourselves able to stand before the God we have loved and talked with daily and find ourselves justified – despite our sins – and hear the words,

²³ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Since you have been faithful in small matters, I will give you much greater responsibilities. Come and share your master’s joy.’

Matthew 25:23

Today is Ash Wednesday – the first day of the 40 days of Lent. This day is not officially a holy day of obligation, but it is still one of the most well attended masses of the year. The faithful gather together to start Lent with ashes on their forehead. Covering yourself in ashes and wearing sack cloth was a traditional symbol of repentance and humility long into ancient times. As the faithful are marked with the ashes, they are told to “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return”.

As someone that has had a major medical event in my life in my 40’s, and have no less than 2 other friends facing terminal illnesses before 50, I have become all too aware that our lives are sometimes much shorter than we expect. We better do something with the time we have – because what we do in this short window will echo for eternity.

So how does fasting (not eating) and abstinence (not eating meat) fit into that picture? Fasting itself was dramatically different in times past – to the point of eating only 1 meal a day and no meat for the entirety of the 40 days of Lent. In just the last 50-100 years, fasting has dramatically been reduced to only twice a year.

So which should we do? It’s important to know that the goal of fasting is not the fasting itself. Yes, fasting in itself is an offering we make to God. Jesus tells us some evils can only be combated through fasting and prayer. Jesus himself fasted for 40 days in the desert before his ministry began. God accepts those offerings, but the people in Isaiah’s time complained God wasn’t listening and they still suffered. He responds and makes it clear what the real purpose of fasting is:

3 Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
    and oppress all your workers.
4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
    and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
    will not make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast that I choose,
    a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
    and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator[a] shall go before you,
    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
    you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

Isaiah 58 : 3-9

Fasting from food and abstinence are good practices and yield good fruits of self-control and connection to God (if we turn to God). But if we’re largely only doing them to lose a little weight, or end up pumping ourselves up with pride that we endured suffering by our own powers, then perhaps our motives aren’t as much an offering or opening ourselves to God. It turns to just serving our own interests and relying on ourselves.

Jesus also warns we are not to make a big production out of it when we are giving alms but to give in private to the point you should not let your left hand know what your right is doing. We are not to pray by heaping up words publicly for show so others think we’re holy, but in private with sincere, honest prayers. We’re not to look gloomy or try to gain sympathy when fasting. (Matthew 6)

So IN ADDITION to fasting from foods – perhaps we should consider some of the kinds of fasting God communicates through Isaiah:

• Go to confession and repair your relationship with God. Invite Him into every dark corner of your life. Be the man in Luke 18:9-14 that recognizes his brokenness and simply asks for mercy.
• Cease gossiping, any deception, or ill treatment of coworkers, friends, or family.
• When you give up some meal/treat/luxury (morning coffee, video game purchase) – record what you would have spent and give that money instead to charity/feeding the poor (prevents it from just being about saving money).
• Repair a relationship. Reach out to a sibling, parent, relative, coworker, or acquaintance and try to re-connect if you’ve drifted apart, offer forgiveness if it is needed, ask for forgiveness if you hurt them.
• Repair wrongs of your past. Return borrowed/stolen things. Repay debts you owe or replace things you broke.
• Fast from saying anything negative about another person for 40 days but pray for them when you feel the urge to criticize or judge them.
• Go through your pantry and donate food.
• Go through your closets and donate clothes.
• Volunteer at a homeless shelter or food bank.
• Cut down your grocery bill 25% by eating more simple and cheaper dishes – and give the rest to the poor.
• Eat out a few times less a week and donate the money to the poor.
• Stop responding or engaging in internet arguments or political vitriol.
• Fast from the internet or social media for one day a week – or all of Lent – and use that time for more constructive pursuits.
• Give up screens of any type one day a week (screenless Fridays) and use the time to connect with family and friends or pray.
• Stop hating people that believe differently from you politically. Instead pray for them and prayerfully ask what God would like you to say to them. Return love instead of hate.
• Giving up video games for some period of time and use the time for prayer or helping others
• Drive more safely/stop speeding. Return a prayer/forgiveness to a driver instead of a curse when you get cut off.
• Reclaim Sundays from sports/activities to spend time together in prayer, meals together with family, friends, or to help the needy

Fr Dan Reehil shares this very real story on how he drifted away from his faith, but later became a priest. He experienced the emptiness of this world despite his great worldly success and why we so urgently need conversion if we want to find real meaning and happiness. He shares how we can find final perseverance through the First 5 Saturdays devotion. I completed my first 5 Saturdays years ago, but never really stopped. I regularly attend the first Saturday devotion as part of my monthly cycle of confession and prayer and attest it is a very powerful practice filled with many graces and great personal growth.

Fr Reehil, like many, fell away from his faith for 20 years. He had an extremely successful life on the east coast with lots of money, fancy vacation homes, all the man toys, and even a big New York marriage to an attorney which started with an engagement in Paris. But he was terribly unhappy because as he says, he was missing the one thing: God. After the nasty divorce and emptiness, he returned to the church. He went to reconciliation, started attending daily mass, re-engaged prayer, and started spiritual direction.

His journey involved living as an ascetic monk in Nebraska for 5 years and was later ordained as a diocesan priest – later to be made the exorcist for the diocese. But his talk here also focuses on the kind of conversion he, and we, need.

In this video he shares the simple but profound conversion message from Fatima that gave us the gift of the First 5 Saturdays devotion – and why it is so important to find and live conversion and union with Jesus.

I love the movie A Christmas Story. It was one man’s reflection on the traditions and experiences of being a kid at Christmas time in the 50’s. They say that nostalgia runs in waves every 20 years. I think another round comes when you hit 40 years.

I ran across this video of actual 1970’s Christmas music that was played in K-mart stores (I wrote about Mark Davis and his collection of retail store music before).

This music hit me like a truck. I remember being a sub-10 year old kid and being taken to a K-mart just like this around Christmas in the Midwest. I remember buying my first Stomper there, getting clothes, shoes, and school supplies before each school year.

But one of the biggest feelings I had was sadness as to something lost – and a warning. The founder, S.S. Kresge was an incredibly hard worker and a penny-pincher that wore cheap suits until they fell apart and put paper in his shoes when the soles wore thin. At the age of 34 in 1899, he opened a chain of 5 and 10 cent stores. He soon became the second largest retailer in the country. By1924 he was worth equivalent of $3.8 billion. By the 1950’s he had 694 stores. In 1962, he saw retail changing and innovated tons of new ideas with K-mart – like making big stores that carried just about everything one needed in one stop. They also innovated a food court, shopping carts that encouraged browsing and shopping, and being located in suburbs with plenty of free parking that wasn’t available in downtown stores.

And that’s what is fascinating and sad. By the late 80’s, the store started to fall to Walmart that focused on even bigger selection at even lower prices, and Target that focused on higher quality goods. K-mart was left in a strange middle ground and floundered as poor leadership couldn’t figure out their brand message.

It’s the story of a man that worked incredibly hard, pinched every penny, and put in untold hours. Yet, the company he founded in 1962 and drove to the 2nd biggest retailer barely lasted 43 years.

It’s a reminder that everything is passing. No matter what you built, how successful you are, how much power and money you accumulate, it all goes to someone else. And based on how many people under 20 I asked if they even heard of K-mart, how quickly a billionaire (equivalent) and his company is forgotten.

It also reminded me of how important I thought having the new lunch box, new school clothes, new shoes, and the toys was to me, but how unimportant those things are now. Instead, what I really remember and valued are the memories of my family and time we spent shopping together.

It made me think of this section from Introduction to the Devout Life – Fifth Meditation – On Death – Part I, Chapter 13 by St Francis De Sales:

Consider that then the world is at end as far as you are concerned, there will be no more of it for you, it will be altogether overthrown for you, since all pleasures, vanities, worldly joys, empty delights will be as a mere fantastic vision to you. Woe is me, for what mere trifles and unrealities I have ventured to offend my God? Then you will see that what we preferred to Him was nought. But, on the other hand, all devotion and good works will then seem so precious and so sweet –Why did I not tread that pleasant path? Then what you thought to be little sins will look like huge mountains, and your devotion will seem but a very little thing.

Consider how the survivors will hasten to put that body away, and hide it beneath the earth–and then the world will scarce give you another thought, or remember you, any more than you have done to those already gone. “God rest his soul!” men will say, and that is all. O death, how pitiless, how hard thou art!

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back

Hunter S Thompson 1971

Hunter S Thompson became a figure of a generation with gonzo journalism and cemented himself as an early icon of drug fueled antics. He wrote about the world of the late 60’s through 90’s with his unique lens that saw past the veneer and comedically revealed the absurdity of modern culture by his wild antics and fantastic writing.

He is famous for his mantra, “Buy the ticket, take the ride” which meant to fully commit to an experience or path once you’ve started, even if it gets intense or goes off the rails. The inherent risks and unpredictable outcomes are part of the journey for growth and having intense experiences.

Many, including Johnny Knoxville, got a lot their own motivation from him and here reflects his impressions of Hunter before took his own life. I think he nails it when he says, ““The persona he backed himself up into […] it cost him.”

I found some of the viewer comments to be powerful and true. Here’s a particularly great one:

I was obsessed with Hunter S. Thompson when I was in my late teens, early 20s. Eventually, I reached an age where I continued to appreciate his contributions to literature, but started to realize that it was a mistake to revere him as some sort of hero. When he took his own life, that only cemented the position. I think it was his sheer talent that papered over the fact that his ‘buy the ticket, take the ride’ philosophy is an utterly selfish and broken way to go about life.

But this is what we do… we mistake eloquence for truth and wrongly convince ourselves that there’s a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And for the author himself, what kind of mindfuck must it be when, seemingly, the whole world celebrates and mythologizes your most destructive instincts? You’ve got guys like Johnny Depp, John Cusack, and Sean Penn worshipping you like a guru… I mean, how are you supposed to get off that treadmill?

You wonder if their romanticized view of him, as well as his philosophy, stood in the way of actually getting him help.

@tommy2159

I think this user, and Knoxville, see the truth. Living just for wild experiences is something many of us do in our 20’s. But it runs out. I have done and seen a crazy amount of interesting things in my time. I used to seek out lots of unique experiences and activities. But eloquence and excitement are not necessarily truth. Instead, as I have learned over the years, real truth shows itself in the outcomes and results: and the result most associated with truth? Peace. Especially a deep, abiding peace within yourself.

All of this made me think about a pattern I see happening in the software industry in 2024-2025. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and countless game/web companies have all had big layoffs and I’ve witnessed many professional friends get hit. After an amazing 20 year career, Intel has laid off a great number of people that absolutely defined computing in the 90’s and 2000’s.

Many people that are laid off often experience shock, then anger or sadness, and then fear about the future. What’s interesting is that both laid off people, and people who retire, also report feeling another thing: the loss of identity or sense of purpose. It paralyzes some to the point they are left in confusion, stuck in the past, stuck with anger, or unable to move on.

Johnny Knoxville thinks Hunter S Thompson made himself a persona. Many rock stars and movie stars make themselves a persona. But they’re not the only ones. Many professionals make themselves a persona – often referred to as your ‘personal branding’. Some people define themselves by being a mom/dad, or their traits like ‘the happy one of the group’. I think many people at Intel made themselves a persona as world-class leaders or engineers. The problem with personas are that people cling to them even when it becomes clear it’s killing them or destroying their happiness or relationships. Or even worse, these personas are all based on things that are temporary and very easily lost. Job titles and possessions can be stripped with the simple words, “You’re fired”.

I give Knoxville credit, he seems to have realized he created a persona that was destructive. It appears he, and others from Jackass, have worked hard for years now to get away from those personas.

The question is – can we see and walk away from our personas? Ask yourself: how do I define myself? Is it my job or company I work for? Is it being a spouse/mother/father? Is it the things we own? The skills we have (driver, climber, pilot, etc)? Could I lose those things and still know who I am?

I would challenge us all to really look at that. I did as it was becoming clear my time at Intel likely wasn’t going to last long. It gave me time to see exactly what parts of me were still clinging to that persona. What if I left my job or got fired? What happens when my children move away and have their own lives? What happens when my spouse passes away? Do I still know who I am?

For me, it was a fantastic invitation to go deeper into prayer and my connection with God. As things got rougher and rougher, I leaned more of my identity into who *He* told me I was, and I found myself less trapped by who *I* thought I was.

If you are struggling, I cannot urge you enough to turn to prayer in this time before Christmas. Not just haphazard prayer while driving or formulaic prayer; but pour out your heart and sit in prolonged silence with God. Go to a half hour of adoration. Spend some time this Advent listening. Let God tell you who you are. Troubles will always come – they did for Jesus. But when you know you’re following and living with God who intensely loves you, you do not get trapped by your personas. You instead get enveloped by the one that sees you as a intensely loved child by the creator of the universe.

My humble website rarely gets more than a hundred or so visitors a day, but I recently posted a Defcon talk video link and summary about the impending quantum computing security crisis. Just summarizing and linking to the video had an immediate and shocking effect. My site got overrun with thousands of hits overnight:

And where were all those people coming from?

Interesting.

The Vatican has released the doctrinal note Una Caro: In Praise of Monogamy (Italian only so far, you can use google translate for now) to give guidance are re-enforce on already existing teaching on the subject of marriage.

You can find a great summary of it’s main points here.

In a world that is rapidly and constantly changing definitions about the nature of relationships as well as basic definitions of human biology, this is an excellent document to read if you want to know the beauty our physical bodies and relationships have always been understood as: gifts, signs, and multi-layered bonds of unity that mirror the love Christ has for the Church – his bride.

Give it a read as we await our bride groom who comes in just a few short weeks at Christmas – born in a barn, placed in a feed trough, and united with for us in our humble humanity.

“[…] pop culture holds a disdain for history. Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you’re participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it’s living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]—and the Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made.

—Alan Kay, on Computing, Dr. Dobb’s Interview with Alan Kay 2012

What did you do when you saw/heard this story in the news about the CEO and the head of HR at Astronomy?

Now ask yourself: Who would that have made you in the crowd during Jesus’ time?

8 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them. ³ The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, ⁴ they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. 

⁵ Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?” 

⁶ They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. ⁷ But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” ⁸ Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. 

⁹ When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court. ¹⁰ Straightening up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?” ¹¹ She said, “No one, Lord.”

And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.”

John 8:1-11