Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

In the weeks before Ash Wednesday, there were many moments when I got drawn into some kind of indulgence (food, internet, music, &c), and had the burning thought, "I need Lent!" It surprised me how much my soul longed for fasting.

There's a yearning again A thirst for discipline A hunger for things that are deeper (Cry in My Heart - Starfield)

When I depend too much on material things, my orientation turns back into myself, my image, my desires. The selfish soul is a miserable soul. Fasting is so powerful because it purges out the selfishness and turns the soul's orientation outside of itself--up toward God, and around toward men. I love that fasting is such a physical discipline. As corporeal humans, we need that. We can't forget that Christ is human as well, and He has physically sacrificed Himself for us in every way. Can't we be a little hungry for Him? Can't we endure a little silence for Him? A passage from St. Augustine's Confessions helped me think of it this way: if we can't have the physical discipline to get out of our comfortable beds in the morning, how can we have the spiritual discipline to get out of our comfortable sins? Getting up early is a denial of self-pleasure, but once you do it you really begin to live. Getting out of our sins is a denial of our flesh, but we can't truly begin to live until we wake up. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. The discipline of Lent helps us to lose our dependence on material things and become more dependent on the Word of God. This scripture has always meant a lot to me, but as a Catholic it totally blows me away, and here's why: Christ is the Word spoken by the Father, and He is the Bread that gives us eternal life. He is our literal nourishment. During Lent, my goal is to lose some of my attachments to worldly comforts and start really living on Christ.