Fasting, Sputum, and Serpents

I do not like lent. Mortification stinks. Fasting is really hard.

And Lent starts this Wednesday.

So, here's a little kick-in-the-pants, brought to you by Saint Ambrose, from his Hexameron, a commentary on the six days of creation in Genesis. Man, if this doesn't get you fired up for fasting, I don't know what will:

"You have in mind to procure a drug, but you shun fasting as a restorative, as if you could find another remedy as efficacious as that! A serpent suffers death after tasting the *sputum of a man who is fasting. You see, then, what potency there is in fasting, when a man can kill a serpent with his own sputum. If this is true of an earthly being, how much more true is it of the realm of the spirit!" (245-246).

Wow.

*sputum |ˈspyoōtəm|(noun) : a mixture of saliva and mucus coughed up from the respiratory tract, typically as a result of infection or other disease and often examined microscopically to aid medical diagnosis.

ORIGIN late 17th cent.: from Latin, neuter past participle of spuere ‘to spit.’