Do you ever wish we Catholics could shift culture as effectively as we shift fast food menus during Lent? There’s a huge billboard on my block that just changed out the advertisement to brag about the sale on the Filet-O-Fish. It will be up for roughly the next 40 days, after which it will be taken down and replaced. The question I ask you is: When that billboard is changed, will you also be changed?
I read today’s Gospel about not fasting when we have the bridegroom with us and think: “So wait, are you saying I should order the Big Mac and skip the Fish?” Is the bridegroom 
here, or is this the time without the bridegroom? I come away from this very short Gospel with more questions than answers.
I might get schooled by the theologians in the house but here are my thoughts: We are in the longing. We’re stretching between heaven and earth. We’ve met the bridegroom, we know the ending, but our hearts still yearn for the completion of all things. We need little tastes of the wedding party and little tastes (or healthy gulps at times) of the fasting. TO DO WHAT?
Fasting is the space that we give ourselves to feel that longing in our hearts. A time to let the ache for the heavenly banquet sink deep inside our bones. We take the next 40 days to fast, so that when we look up at the billboard and it has moved on to Shamrock Shakes or whatever the next thing is, we’re able to see past the advertisement into the heavens and recognize our place there and have a new vigor to find ourselves there.
We fast the next 40 days. When we’re done, that billboard will have moved onto Shamrock Shakes or whatever the next thing is. But our hearts will be more firmly focused on our true home in heaven; we will more surely seek our rightful place beside the Bridegroom.
Cory Heimann is the creative director at Likable Art. He studied Theology and Catechetics at Franciscan University of Steubenville. A desire to stir up beauty drives his love for collaborating and creating. His favorite creations are his 3 boys in collaboration with his wife.
