Rend Your Hearts--Not Your Garments: Give Them to the Homeless Guy over There.

n today's reading, we get a picture of fasting gone wrong, and "fasting" done right. It was interesting to see God say through Isaiah, "I do not want you to put ashes on yourself." Back when I was a Protestant, I might have said, "Aha! See, O Catholics, how you err! For you put ashes on yourself on Ash Wednesday, contrary to what the Bible says. But that would miss the point.

The ceremonies of the Jews were only evil in that they distracted the Jews from what was essential, that to which the ceremonies and symbols were pointing: a just society in which the people took care of each other. Does that mean socialism a-la Bernie Sanders ought to reign, and we should tax the living daylights out of those nasty millionaires (All of whom we know must be corrupt, or else how did they get so much money?) and give it all to the poor? Should we enact the words of Jesus in that way and thus render to Caesar what is Caesar's, at the same time we render to God what is God's?

The Bible is silent (in these readings at any rate), and I think it is silent on the subject in the same way it is silent on how to get to the Moon. As Galileo is supposed to have said, "The Bible was written to show men how to get to heaven, not how the heavens go." The mechanics of social justice are largely dependent on the particular characteristics of the society. What the Bible is not silent on is the fact that the poor should be taken care of, that one way or another a just society will look after them, whether through private voluntary actions or through public governmental action. I happen to think in our society the poor are better off when they rely on private charity rather than public works that all too often intentionally leave problems unsolved in order to preserve the tax-funded program that was supposed to solve the problem. Thus mediocrity sets in and there is a loss of desire to solve the problem. Federally funded NGOs, and even private ones, are notorious for using 90% of funds donated to pay themselves fat checks, while only 10% may go to nominally trying to solve the problems for which they were supposedly created. The further we get from individual action, it seems the more inefficient and sometimes even counterproductive the actions of these larger-than-human organizations seem to get. What if people just tried to be kind to others when they see them personally in need, and banded together only when I problem arose that a single person could not help to solve through private action?

But the Bible doesn't talk about that, and that is just the author's opinion. What the Bible does unmistakably say today is that if you were putting ashes on your face Wednesday morning, but had plenty of money in your wallet and refused to buy a meal for Josh the homeless guy begging for food outside the church as you were headed for breakfast, you have missed the point of the exercise. Oh, sorry, did I say his name was Josh? I meant to say His Name is Jeshua bar Miriam.