This from the Tribune's voice of the people on March 18:
Sacrifice during Lent

"Catholics worldwide have made their decisions regarding what to give up for Lent. Is it candy, ice cream, movies, television or some other pleasure? The idea is to share in the suffering that the Bible says was experienced by Jesus at his crucifixion. However, when all of this self-denial is added up, it's very difficult to see that anything worthwhile is accomplished. Just imagine the actual good that would result if all Catholics shifted their focus from denying themselves pleasure to providing help to their fellow human beings by donating to a charity or volunteering to help the less fortunate. Now that would make Lent a most worthwhile season. —Jeff Robertson, Orland Hills"

The rather typical sentiment of a "modern" secular man, for whom ascetic conduct doesn't "accomplish anything worthwhile."

Now listen to Pope Benedict XVI in his Ash Wednesday homily:

"For this year’s Lenten Message, I wish to focus my reflections especially on the value and meaning of fasting. . . We might wonder what value and meaning there is for us Christians in depriving ourselves of something that in itself is good and useful for our bodily sustenance. The Sacred Scriptures and the entire Christian tradition teach that fasting is a great help to avoid sin and all that leads to it. For this reason, the history of salvation is replete with occasions that invite fasting. . .In the New Testament, Jesus brings to light the profound motive for fasting. . . [t]rue fasting, as the divine Master repeats elsewhere, is rather to do the will of the Heavenly Father, who “sees in secret, and will reward you” (Mt 6,18).
In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting . . . is, in the first place, a “therapy” to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God.

"At the same time, fasting is an aid to open our eyes to the situation in which so many of our brothers and sisters live. In his First Letter, Saint John admonishes: “If anyone has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, yet shuts up his bowels of compassion from him – how does the love of God abide in him?” (3,17). Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15).

"By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger. It is precisely to keep alive this welcoming and attentive attitude towards our brothers and sisters that I encourage the parishes and every other community to intensify in Lent the custom of private and communal fasts, joined to the reading of the Word of God, prayer and almsgiving. From the beginning, this has been the hallmark of the Christian community, in which special collections were taken up (cf. 2 Cor 8-9; Rm 15, 25-27), the faithful being invited to give to the poor what had been set aside from their fast (Didascalia Ap., V, 20,18). This practice needs to be rediscovered and encouraged again in our day, especially during the liturgical season of Lent."

If, as the writer intimated, one either fasts or does good deeds, his point would be valid. But the dichotomy he draws is false, as the pope shows. The two great commandments can only be fulfilled together.