On Wednesday Lent begins, and with it the call to three ancient spiritual disciplines: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. These are three ways to remit the temporal punishment due to sin, and are also good for us. As Sister Tamsin Mary Geach has written, “Fasting addresses our bodily passions, almsgiving addresses the tendency to put money or possessions or any other material good between ourselves and God, while prayer acknowledges our total dependency on God, and turns us away from the sin of pride.”