Laetare Sunday- To your fatherly health
We are half way through lent. It's time to rejoice. I keep finding the Lord bringing me back to reading Ben Sira/Sirach 30 and for good cause. During lent we are asked to identify and seek out and destroy sin. We do this in the name of being in right relationship to our Lord. Or put in another way to be healed and live healthy.
I work in the health and recreation sector, and I can't tell you how often people are concerned about healthy living and eating clean. What often is neglected about our body is how this clean eating and fit-ness applies to also the interior life.
Everyday the body naturally excretes waste, but we willingly have to exercise excreting the waste from our minds/heart/words spoken and behaviors. Our fascination and concern with health, strength, endurance, and clean eating also needs to carry over to what we put into our hearts/mind/eyes (cf Matthew 15:19)
As a father reading Sirach 30 the chapter ties "Training Children" and "Health and Cheerfulness" together. It has been my experience that training children does not elicit cheerfulness or interior health. On the contrary it elicits anger, impatience, and irritability. However, we need to place our source of joy on the Lord's resurrection and his glorified body. Our joy needs to move from what my children/spouse/myself are not to what the Lord has done, can do, will do. Only grace can restore our health. As I round out the last stretch of lent I too want to have a glorified body and that requires me to keep reading over and over and over Sirach 30.
I'm including notes from the Didache Bible for your convenience.
30: 1-13 Sound discipline (which would include physical beating) and careful education of children correct self-indulgence and stubbornness, prevent remorse and humiliation, and bring parents to lasting joy and delight, prestige among friends, jealousy of enemies, perpetuation and vindications of themselves through their offspring (vv.1-6). Lack of discipline and overindulgence of children bring sorrow and disappointment, terror and grief (vv.7-13).
Parental love involves discipline when necessary as well as good example. While abuse can never be tolerated, prudent forms of punishment are permissible as a way of giving effective character formation to children. Imparting discipline is a demonstration of love that aims at improving the behavior and developing the talents of the child. God's love includes the allowance of suffering, which serves a a purification of our spiritual growth (CCC 2223).
30:14-25-Health of mind and body and joy of heart Ben Sira judges to be more precious than wealth (vv 14-16), whereas bitterness, constant illness and affliction are more difficult to bear than death (vv 17-20). Sadness, resentment, anxiety, envy, and anger shorten days; they should be dispelled by cheerfulness and gladness of heart, which help to prolong one's days (vv. 21-25)
The Church teaches that we are to take reasonable care of our health out of respect for our bodies so they can serve as good instruments of the soul. To abuse our bodies in any form, including the dangerous drugs, mutilations, and other practices is sinful. As a corollary to every person's right to a dignified life the Church calls upon employers and governments to ensure that workers receive a wage that is sufficient to support their fameless and care for their health needs (CCC 2431, 2288-2291).
