Certainly, prayer includes the vocal prayer that we offer. But prayer is also an attitude, a mind-set. "Let this mind be in you that is also in Christ Jesus," St. Paul wrote to the Philippians (5:11). We are to have our thoughts and our minds turned toward God. That's why the prophet Joel (2:12) said, "Rend your hearts and not your garments." For the Jew, the heart was taken as being the seat of all understanding and thought. "Change your thinking," Joel is saying. This is the attitude of prayer: realizing that we are always in the presence of God. Every waking moment of our lives and even when we are sound asleep, God sustains us in the palm of His hand. That is the attitude of prayer that we must develop, especially during the Lenten season.
And fasting. Of course, we fast during Lent, and we abstain from meat on certain days. But even more so, fasting means that we would abstain from anything that distracts us from what should be our single-minded purpose: that of drawing closer to God. Whatever obstructs our relationship with God, from that we are to abstain. It’s an ancient practice to fast, to say “no” to things that are perfectly legitimate in and of themselves, so that we can more easily say “no” to the things that are not legitimate; namely, temptation to sin.
And thirdly, almsgiving. It means more than dropping the coin or the bill in the basket. It means more than writing the check to charity. Of course, those things are good and necessary. But almsgiving is more than that. Almsgiving is also an attitude of mind, where we are to become more conscious of the fact that we really are neighbours to one another, that we really are brothers and sisters in the Lord, and that we really do need to respond to one another's needs. Whenever and however we do that, it is part of almsgiving.
The season before us is a beautiful one, and in some ways it even has its own special kind of joy. It begins with Ash Wednesday, but it blossoms with the celebration of Easter: the celebration of our new risen life in Christ, a life already begun in us, and which is aided by the practice of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
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Painting: "Simon of Cyrene Carrying the Cross"
by Romke Hostrea