A few weeks ago, much of southern Indiana and Kentucky were without power, St. Meinrad included. We had to bear the cold, work in the day light, light candles, bundle up, stoke fires, and sit in silence for a while.
With the electricity cut off, silence began to reign all around. No more constantly whirring motors, which you don’t even notice until they’ve stopped. If you didn’t need the electricity to survive, if you could find food and enough warmth, the power outage was a blessing in disguise. Of course, there were those whose lives depended on electricity in such cold weather, and much was lost in the aftermath.
Loss of savings, loss of jobs, loss of influence also spell loss of power for just about everyone. What does God want to teach us right now? How much do we really need? How much of our country’s excess wealth contributed to a loss of spiritual awareness?
In this season of Lent, we take the opportunity to fast and pray a bit more than usual. As one of my professors recently noted, fasting is the privilege of the wealthy. The poor fast all the time; and perhaps they pray more purely, too. Fasting, praying, and giving alms. We could all use some alms nowadays. If everybody gave, wouldn’t we all have enough?
