Our mission during Lent is to become more holy

Lent! Are we ready for it? Have we been praying about what we’re going to do? Have we been thinking about it?

Lent is a solemn season in the Church. It is a season to ponder anew our own need for ongoing conversion. It’s a time to ponder anew God’s amazing love and mercy for us shown so tangibly in Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of our sins.

And Lent is a time, a season, that has but a single goal: holiness.

If, come Easter, you and I resemble Jesus more closely than we do today, it will have been a fruitful Lent. If we love more sincerely than we do today, perhaps especially that one person in our life who tends to annoy us, it will have been a fruitful Lent. If we turn away from sin that seems to cling to us so closely now, whether it’s bitterness, or lust, or gossip, or judgmentalism, it will have been a fruitful Lent.

If these things don’t happen this will have been a wasted seven weeks, spiritually speaking.

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I ever truly knew what this season was all about. Growing up, as a kid, all I knew was that the candy seemed to disappear from the house. Even later in life, while I might have grasped that Lent was about more than silly things like not eating candy, I didn’t quite know what it was about.

So, what, concretely, are we to be doing in this next month-and-a-half before Easter? Well, the Church has always encouraged us to focus on three things so as to help us grow in conformity to Jesus. Those three things are prayer, almsgiving and fasting. These are the guides offered to us to help us grow in holiness.

And now it’s simply up to each one of us to take these days around Ash Wednesday to think and pray about how we’re going to make use of them and then, to begin them in earnest.

First, prayer. I would think it’s probably safe to say that all of us could pray more during Lent. I know I could!

That might take the shape of deciding to come to morning Mass during the week. What better way for some of us to spend more time in prayer than by gathering around this altar not only on Sunday but once, twice, or even every day during the week, feasting on God’s Word and on the Eucharist?

It’s also a time for almsgiving. Like prayer, this is something we’re always supposed to do, but with an increased focus in these days. Maybe, for example, you can give up that morning coffee at your favorite venue and give that money to your parish, or a soup kitchen, or some other charity. You might be amazed how quickly all those lattes and mochas add up!

And lastly, there’s fasting. Jesus speaks in the Gospel today about fasting. He tells us that a day will come when His disciples will fast. That day is now. He says, “when you fast” not “if you fast.” Thus, there is a clear expectation that we will fast.

But why? What does fasting do other than help us lose a few pounds? Well, it does two things in particular. First it helps us to hear the Lord better in prayer. When our physical appetites aren’t constantly sated and stuffed, our spiritual appetites, or antennae, become sharper.

In the words of Hosea, fasting is a way for us to go, interiorly, into the desert, where we meet the Lord who loves us more than any bridegroom loves his bride.

But fasting can also be a hidden act of love for another. The most important thing I’ve learned about Lent is to make sure that whatever we do in these days, whatever we give up, we give up for someone, for a specific intention: our spouse, our child, someone at work, a priest, who knows. By our acts of penance, our fasting for another, we deny ourselves something out of love for that person.

And in much the same way that the ocean erodes away a coastline over the years, so, I think, our fasting for another helps erode their resistance to God’s grace. So whatever we choose to give up, let us make sure we give it up for someone out of love, and not merely to see if we can lose some weight or work on our will-power.

I once heard someone say, “You will only enjoy Easter to the extent that you truly celebrate Lent. And you will get out of Easter what you put into Lent.” May we truly celebrate this season of grace about to begin, and may we all arrive at Easter looking more like Jesus than we do today.

Fr. John Riccardo is pastor of St. Anastasia Church in Troy, Michigan

 

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