you call this a fast?
For the use and benefit of those who would "keep a holy Lent" by daily Mass, our lectionary https://www.lectionarypage.net/CalndrsIndexes/Calendar2024.html has Propers for every day of Lent.
You could also read and contemplate the Lenten daily propers personally, at home, as your Lenten discipline: the "bodily self-denial" mentioned in The Collect need not be giving up chocolate, or tobacco, or some other obsession (the idea of that "giving up" is not to punish yourself through Lent and then ravenously return to your habit on Easter, but to develop in yourself the ability and practice to shed the obsession altogether). You do what fits, but myself, though I'm a day late, I think I may do just that and read the daily propers as part of my Lenten observance. I'll see if it lasts longer than my New Years Resolutions ever do.
The Isaiah reading is choice! primarily an oracle, the prophet speaking God's words as though Adonai himself were bodily present and chastising, what?, as He did with Adam and Eve in the Garden.
In a nutshell God saying, sarcastically because God knows damn well that we'll never do it, "You call this a fast: to smear your face and wallow in sackcloth and ashes?! You're an alphabet hypocrite! Let me tell you what a real fast is: that you give up your egotistical selfishness, greed, certainties, and meanness and start treating other people with justice, kindness, generosity."
That would be a holy Lent!
RSF&PTL
T88&c
The Collect
Support us, O Lord, with your gracious favor through the fast we have begun; that as we observe it by bodily self-denial, so we may fulfill it with inner sincerity of heart; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Old Testament Isaiah 58:1–9a
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Yet day after day they seek me
and delight to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
they ask of me righteous judgments,
they delight to draw near to God.
"Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?"
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.
Is such the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
THEN your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
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Art: pinched online.