The Three Pillars of Lent

Prayer is communion with God that heals us: new research reveals measurable mental-health benefits—dampened anxiety, calmer brains, deeper purpose and resilience—while distinguishing prayer styles and their psychological payoff. This isn’t airy theology but data suggesting spiritual formation shapes emotional wiring. A must-read for practitioners seeking evidence-rooted soul care. ⁽ⁱ⁾

Recent science suggests fasting is more than ancient ritual: an MIT-linked study finds it regenerates gut stem cells, accelerates healing, and metabolically resets the body after feasting. For Christians, the findings provoke a deeper question—has spiritual formation always carried embodied wisdom modern research is only now beginning to grasp again? ⁽ⁱⁱ⁾

As Lent unfolds, fresh studies recast ancient Lenten pillars—prayer rewires stress and compassion circuits, fasting triggers physiological renewal, and almsgiving boosts well-being and relational health. Science and spirituality are not rivals but partners, showing these disciplines shape body, mind, and community. A compelling bridge between Christian formation and empirical insight.

i. Andrew Newberg is a researcher and more or less the father of neurotheology. He documents via brain imaging the profound transformation that happens at the synaptic level when people pray and meditate over years. In one of them he had to have participants sign a waiver that they were not pregnant to go through scanning—and they were a group of nuns up into their 80’s!

ii. I had never seriously thought much about fasting until reading Dallas Willard’s THE SPIRIT OF THE DISCIPLINES. What struck me most was his teaching about how words—especially the Word of God—are substance. They become part of our body. So fasting is not designed to deprive; "fasting is feasting" on God’s word.