A SPECIAL FAST

There are two personal areas with which I have fought much of my youth.

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The first is television because I have always been passionate about the media in all its forms. In fact, a large part of my adolescence I worked as a humorous cartoonist and graphic designer of magazines and newspapers.

I could spend more than five hours zapping with the remote control, systematically going through more than sixty channels. I never considered it a weakness, because it calmed my conscience with the argument that I was only informing myself. After all, I needed to disconnect from the daily stresses. However, little by little the hours lost in front of the television managed to dissipate my life of prayer. "I can handle this with maturity," he said, "if I choose what to look for; thus I will never have problems with my spiritual life ».

One night, after turning off the television, I went to my room to pray and asked the Lord what I needed so He could use me. Then I heard a voice in my heart: "I want you to fast. But not a fast of food, but a fast of legitimate things. "

That meant abstaining from certain "pleasures" that were not necessarily sinful but were requested of me by God. A fast of "legitimate things" implies then denying unfriendly friendships, idle conversations or hours in front of the TV screen. If you think I complained, you're right. After "explaining" to the Lord that watching television is not a sin nor watching a movie would make me abandon prayer, and after wielding many other excuses, I understood that God wanted me to start my journey on the cross by fasting from everything I occupied. my valuable time

I value food fasts a lot, but I am convinced that it is useless to abstain from food all day long if we then "choke" on television or any other type of distractions the rest of the week. Therefore, being dead to the flesh means being able to give everything not only in an occasional fast, but in our whole life.