THE LENTEN FAST
‘This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.’
Here we have set before us a very striking and significant contrast: the contrast between the spiritual power of Jesus fresh from the Mount of Transfiguration, and the want of such power in His disciples, who represent to us the common life of the multitude and the plain. It is in our religious life just as in everything else—spiritual carelessness or neglect must mean spiritual weakness.
I. The great surrender.—Do we desire to cast any evil influence or any weakness out of our life? Do we ask despairingly how it is that we have not been able to cast it out? Our Lord’s answer comes to us in these emphatic words—‘This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer.’ In other words, if we really desire that our soul shall be cleansed and strengthened, we must surrender it to Him in prayer and self-denial, in spiritual exercises and communion, that He may cure it of its sin or its weakness, and inspire us with new life.
II. Christ’s example.—Christ’s own practice corresponds with His warnings and injunctions. These withdrawals of Jesus into the solitude of the desert or the mountain, these hours in which He was alone with the Father, are but another name for those exercises of prayer, fasting, meditation, communion with God, without which it is not possible to eradicate from the soul those influences of sin which destroy its harmony and undermine its strength.
III. The Lenten Fast.—Let us not fancy that we can allow such seasons as Lent to come and go, year by year, giving them no thought or attention, without some corresponding loss. The voice of humanity, and the experience of centuries, the practice of holy men, and the example and the words of Christ Himself, have all testified to the need there is for the spiritual observance of such times, if men are to keep their soul alive in them—and who are we that we should venture to set ourselves against such overpowering testimony?
—Bishop Percival.
Illustrations
(1) ‘In prayer and fasting let us strive
To keep our bodies down,
To save our precious souls alive,
And win a glorious crown.’
(2) ‘Matthew (Matthew 17:21) gives our Lord’s answer more fully. His first words are, “Because of your unbelief.” In this, the latter part of His answer, He takes the Apostles yet farther back, namely to the cause of their want of faith. They lacked faith, because they had been slack in those spiritual exercises which keep faith bright and strong.… We may note that “prayer and fasting” are as blessed in gaining the Holy Spirit as they are in expelling the evil one (Acts 13:3; Acts 14:23).’