40  DAYS  TO  A MORE 

POWERFUL  YOU 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this Friday after Ash Wednesday is, “40 days to a More Powerful You.”

When I was a kid my brother came upon a book, “Thirty days to a More Powerful Vocabulary.”

For about the next 30 days, we would see him in a real different mode.

He we would open his new word’s book every morning and start using a strange new word all day long. The word I liked the most was, “ses – qui – pe – dalion”.

It means a person who uses long words.

To break this word down from the Latin, it means “a foot and a half long”. Sesqui means “one and a half”; “ped” means “foot”.

It got us to grab the dictionary and try to stump him with a big word.

Looking back now 60 years later, the only word I remember him using  was that word, “ses – qui – pe – dalion”.

LENT

Lent is 40 days to practice some virtue or religious practice.

You know the only saying, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall: answer – practice, practice, practice.

We were taught the old Latin saying from Ovid:” Gutta cavat lapidem – non vi sed saepe  cadendo.” Drop, by drop, but not by force, the rock gets a hole in it.”

So basketball players, practice the same shot over and over and over again.

So in Lent, we practice every day something like fasting, or praying, or reading. That’s what those little books – with spiritual reading for every day of Lent is about.

So today’s first reading and gospel get at fasting.

One will lose weight from fasting of food – and if it’s well done, one becomes more disciplined.

And Isaiah 58 – today’s first reading – tells us what kind of fasting to do: being nicer to others. Not being on everyone’s case. Being more thoughtful. Less gossip. Less fighting.

Do this stuff – day by day by day – one becomes thinner in ego and unhealthy pride.

Do this stuff to be seen – one becomes fatter and   fatter with self-centeredness.

CONCLUSION

And doing all this inwardly – one notices in oneself – breakthroughs in being a more powerful spiritual person. Amen.