By David G. Bonagura, Jr.

"Drain the swamp!" is one of today's more passionate political cries. The swamp, of course, is Washington, D.C., which oozes all sorts of contaminations: slimy politicians, rancid deals, foggy lies, sink-holes of money, hazy procedures. The people demand a champion, a DOGE, to clean it up: to drain its political and social sins so the government can function smoothly, and America can be great again.

"Swamp theory" assumes that the governmental system is broken and that a properly functioning reform will bring in a kind of political salvation. There is some truth in this contention, but Catholics must avoid seeing "the system," and not sinful individuals, as the real problem. As Pope St. John Paul II taught, "such cases of social sin are the result of the accumulation and concentration of many personal sins." (Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 16)

When constant media coverage hypes fixing "the system," this system can easily become the speck in the other's eye that shifts attention from the beam in our own. For as St. John Paul continued, if any structural and institutional reforms do occur, they will be "of short duration and ultimately vain and ineffective, not to say counterproductive, if the people directly or indirectly responsible for that situation are not converted."

Lent recalls us from the hype, from the structures, and back to God so that we can pull out that beam each of us has lodged in his eyes. Lent challenges us to drain the swamp that concupiscence generates within us lest our lives become submerged in sin, selfishness, and ego.

That inner swamp conditioned by concupiscence, the irregular desire for sin that weighs down all children of Adam, is real, and it is the cause of so much evil in ourselves, in Washington, and beyond. Unchecked, the swamp's slow, sometimes imperceptible crawl can overtake us and weaken our wills to resist even greater sins. This happened to King David, who forsook his duty to lead his army into battle so he could stay home, on the couch. (2 Sam 11:1-2) His sloth became an occasion of lust, which then led to his adultery, which then led to his conspiracy to murder.

Lent provides three tools - fasting, prayer, and almsgiving - that help us drain the swamp of concupiscence within us. Each one counters one of the three chief manifestations of concupiscence: sensuality, pride, and vanity. Repentance, sorrow for sins, is the executive order issued on the federal level (the Church) and the local level (the individual) that sets the work in motion.

"The discipline of fasting," writes Adalbert de Vogüé, O.S.B., in his soul-jabbing book To Love Fasting, "is man's first step in pursuit of perfection." Fasting has an "afflictive aspect" that serves "as punishment for faults." It is also a "liberating practice" that "should be felt as the suppression of useless and burdensome excesses."

Abstinence from food, and from other burdensome excesses of which we are not short, frees us from these worldly concerns. Each hunger pang or twitch toward the goods we have forsaken has to be redirected toward God with a conscious prayer: "Lord, I'm sorry for my sins, for which I deserve these pains. Grant me the grace to desire you more than these perishing things."

Dom de Vogüé adds that mastering our appetites by fasting "permits a greater mastery of the other manifestations of the libido and aggressiveness. It is as if the man who fasts were more himself, in possession of his true identity, and less dependent on exterior objects and the impulses they arouse in him." Unrestrained libido and aggressiveness have created swampy conditions in many a soul - and times beyond number, in Washington.

Fasting also facilitates Lent's second tool, prayer. In the Bible, fasts "obtain the maximum intensity and efficacy for prayer," Dom de Vogüé teaches. Authentic prayer curbs pride as we creatures submit ourselves to our Creator, beg His forgiveness, and implore Him to increase within us and to decreas...