Daily Reading for March 22 • The Fourth Sunday in Lent
For the prescribed forty days coincide in time with that season of the year when nature experiences a thaw; it is the business of fasting to produce a thaw in our soul. This is not a coincidence. God is sketching His will for us through the living motions of nature. The earth during the appointed forty days rids itself of winter’s harshness and is cut through by the plough that it might become suitable for earthly crops. We, during the forty days, give up the harshness of sin; fasting digs up our earth to render it receptive to heavenly seeds. And just as this is the season for the young twig of a tree to become fruitful and for new branches to produce buds so also at this time man’s lifeless hope revives and lost faith is restored to glory. Nature adorns herself with blossoms and seems to honor the great feast day with her splendor. We, likewise, should now produce roses from our thorns, that is, justice instead of sin, compassion in place of sternness, and instead of avarice, liberality. Only by fasting can we be free of the thorns of our sins. For fasting produces chastity, humility and moderation—the blossoms of our life which blossoms Christ finds fragrant.
From Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, quoted in Liturgical Practice in the Fathers by Thomas K. Carroll and Thomas Halton (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1988).