Lent is here. It is a stark contrast to the warm glow of the Christmas season.
I often try to prepare for Lent as the Jewish people prepared for Passover. I empty our home of sweets and pare down our pantry to basics. The decorations are minimal with candles on the table for Friday stations, and the switch of a couple of throw pillows.
An analogy that comes to mind is when you pack up your home to move. The barren countertops, minimal cups in the cabinet, and only enough food in the fridge and pantry to sustain you until the move. You anticipate when you can leave this desert.
The emptiness of Lent is a palpable void and one that should be noticed. In preparing my home, I also prepare my family. There is an absence here that the church teaches us is necessary and I struggle to be comfortable with it. Perhaps that is the point. Lent is not meant to be comfortable. Lent is meant to form us.
Every Lent, I have this desire to enter deeply into this season of sacrifice and simplicity. There is a longing to give my all to this relationship with the Lord. I want so much for it to look and feel like I am fasting, sacrificing in a real way for the Lord. But as Father Mike Schmitz reminded me in a homily, “My feelings don’t make me more like Jesus. My actions make me more like Jesus,” and that is where my struggle in Lent lies.
Pope Benedict XVI is quoted as saying, “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.”
For many of us, we begin Lent with a strong intention to hold fast to our Lenten pledges. But God created us lovingly with an intellect, passions and our own free will. And if you are like me, all three of these are at war with one another daily, especially in Lent when what I want is not what I find myself doing.
Over the years, I have learned that my battle is not so much with the fast as it is with my will. So, I have dubbed Lent, “Fake it till you make it season.” I choose to recognize the root of the problem, my will, and pick up my cross and begin again, multiple times a day.
The goal of this season of purging our own desires is to intentionally forge a more intimate and vulnerable relationship with Jesus Christ. My marriage has become a lens from which I can more fully embrace this. Is not the goal of our marriage sacrament to lead the other into a closer relationship with the Lord? Do we not do that by training ourselves to think of the other before ourselves? Less of me, more of you. Are we not called to sacrifice, and lay down our lives for the other?
The beauty of the sacrament of marriage is that it gives us a perfect manual for how to “do Lent” well. There are seasons of marriage when it is challenging to love well. We are overworked, sleep deprived, worried and anxious over many things. The well from which I draw to serve and love my spouse seems cracked and dry. I have learned that in those seasons, the well is filled with sacramental grace, the grace given to us upon our wedding day. It is uncomfortable to realize I am empty but beautiful to know God always fills the well with what we need. This well has sustained us in many dry seasons!
Each of us has been given that same sacramental grace to help us know, love and serve the Lord more fully. Take a moment to think of each sacrament you have received and the grace that rests upon you. Sacramental grace is not a one-time gift. It is meant as a tool, a shield, a well from which we can draw to live our life as an abundant offering to the Lord.
When I become distracted in Lent or complacent with what I intended to offer to the Lord, when excuses run rampant and self-pity comes knocking with its enticing comfort, we need to draw fully from the well of grace that is given to each of us.
There is a movie called Paris, je t’aime. It is a series of relational vignettes. In one of them, a man and his wife are meeting at a café. This man is prepared to tell his wife he is leaving her for his mistress. As they sit down to their table, the wife begins to cry. The husband is immediately convinced that she knows about his affair and has known for a while. When she hands him some papers, his demeanor changes as he learns she has terminal cancer. He vows then to himself to care for her through the end of her life. In caring for her, he falls back in love with her. His reflection at the end of the vignette is poignant and one to write upon our hearts. He says, “by acting like a man in love, I became a man in love.”
To become closer to Jesus, we must do the things that draw us closer to Him, even if we fake it until we make it. Our human will is fickle. We are given the season of Lent to tame it. No matter what we “give up,” that is the crux of my offering. Not my will but yours Lord. The beauty is that like the bread given to Elijah for his journey; we too are sustained through the grace of the sacraments, many that we can receive again and again in this season.
Lord, let me embrace this barren season of Lent as one of forming me to become the full version of who you created me to be. This Lent, help me to act more like a person in love with you. Show me what that looks like for you and me, so that I truly may become a person more in love with you. I know that is the desire of your heart, Lord. Please grow this desire within mine.
This article also appeared at The Catholic Times.
