Second Sunday In Lent PSALM SIXTY-NINE

10. I covered My soul with fasting, and it was made a reproach to Me. Although we do not read in the Gospel that they ridiculed Christ’s fasting and goat’s-hair garment, yet the fact that they ridiculed and despised everything else He said and did, and even blasphemed some things, leads to the conclusion that they also ridiculed Him in these matters. For when He preached poverty and said, “How difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of the heavens”, the Pharisees who were greedy heard this and mocked Him. They also mocked Him when He was raising the girl from the dead. Therefore, just as in this matter, so also in abstinence and in clothing and in all things He was their opposite. But they loved to fare sumptuously and be clothed expensively like that carouser (Luke 16:19). Therefore, being perverse, they perverted everything. But the same things happened and still happen to His members in our own time: they are regarded as fools by the world because they do not seek the things that are of the world, namely, feasting and a showy display of garments. “I covered My soul with fasting, and it was made a reproach to Me.” And St. Peter testifies that it happened also to the first Christians, saying in 1 Peter 4:4: “They are surprised that you do not now join them in the same wild profligacy.” They say, “You must conform. That’s the style now.”
But note that fasting should be arranged not for boasting, but He says: “I have humbled My soul.” The Pharisees and hypocrites fasted for the purpose of raising up their soul for a singular kind of glory and boasting (cf. Matt. 6:16). [They humble only the body.] –Martin Luther