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COFFEE WITH SISTER VASSA
PRAYER & FASTING
“Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” (Mk 9:25)
In the Gospel-passage read in our churches on yesterday’s 4th Sundayof Lent, our Lord heals a certain man’s son who was afflicted with “a mute spirit,” which not only made the boy deaf and dumb, but also self-destructive, as the boy’s father says: “And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him.” The disciples could not cast out this demon, and when they asked Jesus why, He said, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
Here's how we might relate to this story. If we or someone(s) in our midst are afflicted by a self-destructive deafness and dumbness, being unable to speak or hear the words we need to speak or to hear, it sounds like we’re stuck in something like an addiction. It’s cutting off all communication with others and leading to self-destruction. The solution is “nothing but prayer and fasting,” says the Lord. That is, we need to turn to God in “prayer,” letting Him into the picture and asking Him to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves; and we need “fasting,” which is abstinence from our usual routine or behaviour-pattern. Fasting breaks the usual pattern and helps us to re-focus; to step into new life, new communion and community, where God is in the picture. Fasting is an abandonment of the pattern we relied on before, which wasn’t working, wasn’t stopping the madness.
Thank You, God, for this reading at this point in our Lenten journey. Let me ask myself: Have I slipped into a self-destructive routine, which is crippling my ability to speak and to hear the words I need to speak and to hear? Is perhaps my sleeping or eating or working routine crippled by an addiction to scrolling through news on my phone? Or some other unhealthy habits? Let me abandon this pattern and let You into the picture again, my King and my God. Help me to help myself, and to return into the creative, not destructive, flow of Your divine energies, that I may be liberated to speak and hear the words I need to speak and to hear.
