What are you going to do for Lent?

I wonder if what you choose to do this Lent is training for martyrdom.

I'm my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascentra Presents.

We're called to move forward in three areas, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Right, so those three areas that Jesus talks about in the Sermon on the Mount,

okay, how am I going to pray in a new way this lent? Or in a way that's consistent this lent that's going to help me in my relationship

with the Lord. Secondly, fasting. So what am I going to give up? And then almsgiving. What am I going

to do? Like, how am I going to help the people around me? Those three buckets of prayer,

fasting, almsgiving are buckets that are really, really important for us to enter into. Now, when it comes to that middle bucket, the middle bucket of,

what am I going to give up? What is the purpose when we give something up, when we fast,

when we have any kind of asceticism? We do it because Jesus told us, when you fast, do it

like this. So we have a command as Christians, as followers of Jesus Christ, as his disciples,

that we're going to fast. So that's the first reason we do it is because Jesus asked us to.

The second reason is because, I mean, I love this. You know the word asceticism. It's A-S-E-E-S-C-E-C-E-T-I-C-I-S-M.

Anyways, asceticism comes from the Greek word acesis. So asceticism is any kind of like, you know, disciplines, any kind of fasting. Assis means training.

And so I think sometimes when you say, like, what am I going to do?

What am I going to give up for Lent?

It's not just about the hard thing I'm going to do.

It's like, what kind of training am I going to engage in?

I have the comic, the Marvel comic book, Maximilian Colby.

It's pretty awesome. But I remember reading that comic book and knowing his life, knowing his story, and knowing that

he's the Franciscan priest who in the concentration camp, two men escaped.

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