Lessons from Fasting Failure

This year for Lent, I took on the discipline of fasting before the Eucharist. It doesn’t quite rank up there with St Antony of the Desert’s heroic efforts of asceticism, but my spiritual director felt that they would be a good discipline for me. My tendency is to want to take on more, do more, accomplish more, and so any discipline of letting go, of self-denial, is going against the grain for me – and is...

Experiments with a Lenten Cupboard

Two years ago I tried out a low-key Lenten practice (I won’t dignify it with the name of “discipline”). The idea was to keep a “Lenten cupboard”:...

Recommended Reading: Athanasius’ The Life of Antony

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” – C.S. Lewis, Preface to The Screwtape Letters. Let me be clear: the year is 2010, and the Enemy is real. Not a metaphor for “negativity” or some other waffle-word, but a real, conscious spiritual...

The Spiritual Disciplines: Praying the Daily Office

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul gives us a bracing challenge: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”...

The Spiritual Disciplines: The Wings of Prayer

Almsgiving, fasting, and prayer: these are the three essential disciplines that every Christian must practice if we are to have any hope of resisting evil. Our Lord himself in the Sermon on the Mount commends these disciplines to us....