I just discovered that I have been discovered. I am now on the list of OURUF blogs, so I guess I'd better post. My target is two per month, but it's more a guideline than an actual rule.
Today is the second day of Lent. I have chosen to give up certain types of beverages for this season, as a means of reminding myself of the feast that is coming. Perhaps a proper fast, in which time is set aside to repent and pray, would be more fitting, but this will do for now. Jessie and I had discussed giving something up together, although we mutually decided that this was perhaps not the time for that.
Why is it so meaningful for us to abstain, especially together? We choose at this time to restrain desires of the body, and it somehow captures this meaning more deeply when these bodily desires are corporately restrained. It reminds us that we are one body in Christ.
Which is perhaps a good reason for my fiancee and myself to
not abstain together, at least yet. We are not unified in marriage yet. It reminds me of just how spiritually meaningful the things of the body are.
The physical is the realm of consumation. It is true to say all that we are as persons is interconnected--in body and in soul; mind, heart, and will; emotional, sexual, intellectual, social, and spiritual desires, all bound and without division. Yet there is hierarchy among them, as there is among the Holy Trinity. I believe that the body is where that which has been definitely and progressively engaged is consumated. Christ's sacrifice is consumated in bodily death; His victory over death by bodily resurrection, and His authority by bodily ascension; His eternal kingdom by bodily return. More and more, I believe it is reasonable to think of his conquest of the world as consumated in His body the Church (granted this is a progressive thing, as well, but in some aspects the Church grows where Christ's Spirit has already been at work). And of course, marriage is to be consumated by bodily union, in all its aspects.
I am not married yet, and so it is healthy to maintain a certain level of separation between my fiancee and myself. We do not live in the same space. We do not go
everywhere together. It seems perfectly appropriate, then, that we decide not to fast together. Yet in the same manner it is utterly appropriate that we do later, when we are married. What a glorious day that will be, and a reminder of the Feast to come.
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