Dear Friends,
Our Lenten journey begins this week. In the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church we have learned that the only way to truly appreciate Easter is to journey with Jesus through Lent. If we come to Easter without Lent, without Good Friday, then we will never understand it.
The period of Lent extends from Ash Wednesday to Easter. While on the calendar this season lasts forty-six days, Lent only officially lasts forty days since Sundays are not included. All Sundays are “mini Easters” and are exempt from this period defined by fasting, prayer, introspection, and the pursuit of holiness. (I know, most of your mothers never told you that and forbid you to have candy on Sunday, but that is not the case).
The forty days of Lent are symbolic of the forty days spent by Christ in the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan. We also have the forty days Moses spent on Mount Sinai, the days and nights of rain during Noah’s flood, the forty days Elijah walked to Mount Horeb, and the forty years the Hebrews spent wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land.
Our observance of Lent should be a time of spiritual renewal and holiness as well as the overflow of faith in the good works for which we have been prepared. We humans are natural procrastinators. We need a declared season of repentance, examination, and spiritual discipline to encourage us to do what Scripture already encourages us to do all the time
One thing I remind people about each year, Lent is not a time for misery. Jesus is clear that when we fast we are to anoint our heads with oil and rejoice. Lent is a time set aside for a special sort of joy. But how can that be if we spend the forty days not eating meat or candy or drinking beer or practicing some other form of self-denial? Isn’t that a cause of unhappiness?
Lent is a time of repentance, yes, but repentance in scripture is constantly presented as a liberation, as a coming to ourselves, as a release from captivity. Repentance is not doing something for sake of suffering or pain. Repentance is the true key to joy and blessedness.
When Adam sinned, God told him that he would return to the dust from whence he came. That is why we cannot escape the sorrow of life. We always feel it. Sometimes we acknowledge it. The difference with Lent is that we embrace the sorrow, and embracing it overcome it. When Adam sinned, he fell under subjection to things he was supposed to rule. The dust first, and animals too. Most of all, he surrendered to himself and his appetites. It was food that cost him his glory. He had been asked to fast from one thing and to eat everything else to his heart’s content. But he didn’t. He ate the one thing that could rob him of all his joy. He fell into subjection to his appetite.
Everything was turned over. The only way to get things right side up again is to repent, which means to turn around. When we repent, we do not enter into a time of misery and sorrow. We restore the dominion we ought to have over our appetites and passions. This is the point of Lent: to take back the rightful dominion for which we were created and to which we were appointed.
If we fast correctly, we bring that thing into submission, and when Easter comes and we enter into the Resurrection of Christ, we can resume the thing denied, no longer as slave, but as rightful master.
Repent of a self-indulgence and take dominion over it from now until Easter. Make it something easy, a victory you feel confident you can win by the grace of God. Don’t try to conquer your every sin. The smaller you start, the more humbly you begin, the more Jesus can reveal grace and strength in and through you. But enter with joy, for it is joy that we are called to by our risen Lord.
Peace,
Fr. Damian