Catholic baby boomers and those older than 60 experienced Lent each year of their childhood within a Catholic culture. Ash Wednesday, daily Mass, abstinence from certain food or alcohol, Operation Rice bowl collections - these were common realties within a common environment. Unfortunately, many churches act as if we are still back in the 1950s or 1960s. This does not mean those practices are obsolete. It means that they need new emphases and Lent needs to be a learning time for all of us.
The three basics of prayer, fasting and almsgiving can't be improved upon, but the spirituality behind the practices is always new, regardless of the culture or reality of daily life. Every religion in the world teaches these in one way or another. It is a way of focusing on God and the needs of others, a way of letting the self-centeredness and busy-ness of most of our lives settle into a realignment of priorities. Lent is the time to sort our lives so that the main things become the main things. Lent is the time to put aside the trivial that over-consumes us and to put our time into the stuff that matters.
"Giving up" things such as candy, dessert or the nightly martini are about more than losing weight. Fasting serves as a reminder to us of what we are about in everyday life. When we reach for the cake or pie we have abandoned for 40 days, we remember we aren't slaves to our desires, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Hopefully, as adults, our Lenten abstinence has moved beyond candy to more significant needs. This might be the time to consider giving up over-work, infidelity in relationships or violence of speech.
No prayer is better than the Mass. Daily Mass, which draws more people during Lent, is the greatest prayer; it is the prayer of Jesus, drawing us into a love between Father and Son that redeems the whole world, that can heal all the violence and war around us.
It would be hard to approach Lent 2007, especially for an American, without being drawn to pray, fast and work for the end of violence within ourselves and our world. We have unleashed a wave of violence in the Middle East that will be a legacy of bloodshed for years to come. The numbers of dead are staggering. We have passed the 3,000 mark of dead Americans, with tens of thousands wounded. According to a Johns Hopkins' October Study, 655,000 Iraqis have died in the war. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees reports that 3.7 million Iraqis are refugees from the war. Two million have left the country and 1.7 million are displaced within Iraq. The commission estimates that more than 2.3 million will be internally displaced before the year's end.
Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, the man who died without lifting a hand or weapon to defend himself, the God who taught us to love our enemy, the center of our life and our faith, is what Lent is about. It is the time to reflect on, remember and imitate his life; it is our time to be Christ for our fractured world. For Catholics, violence is not merely a political reality; it is a challenge to meet with the forgiveness, redemption and hope of Jesus Christ's gift of his own life. This is our Lent; this is our life; this is our faith.
(This column originally appeared in The Providence Visitor)
