Lent has popularly and properly been considered a season of mortification and self-denial. Catholics have given up candy as children and beer or wine as adults. The faithful have sworn off their favorite television programs for forty days and have pushed aside lemon meringue pie until Holy Saturday. Every Lenten act of self-restraint was a reminder, a summons, calling to mind in a special way the supreme sacrifice that the Lord Jesus Christ made on the Cross for the saving of humanity. The believer’s humble, bothersome Lenten gestures (and that is all they really were) momentarily evoked a reminder of the Savior’s Passion and Death. A small token on the disciple’s part recalled the full price on the Master’s part.
Lent equally was, and indeed should more effectively be, not only a season of self-denial but also an occasion for spiritual enhancement. The list of pious devotions and good works that are available to the earnest believer are happily numerous. Attending the parish Mass every day for seven weeks might sound daunting, but there is no more sacramentally rich exercise available to Catholics than the enrichment offered by the hearing of the Word and the reception of the Eucharist. Encountering Christ in the Scriptures and in the Sacrament is humanity’s supreme act of worship and how fortunate Catholics are to have this prayerful encounter with the Divine daily available!
“Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness,” the responsorial psalm appropriately petitions the Almighty on this first Sunday of Lent, “in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense.” The sacrament of Penance should be integral to every season in the Christian life, but Lent especially provides a distinctive sobering mood which should make interior reflection both appropriate and straightforward. In many areas, confessions have ebbed greatly from parish life. Lent should be an ideal time for pastors and parishioners alike to examine their consciences: some for the availability of this ritual and others for the use of this sacrament. Today’s Gospel passage soberly relates Christ’s resistance to temptation. Most believers would do well sacramentally to admit their personal lack of success when facing temptation.
Parish and private devotions during Lent may certainly provide abundant opportunities for a believer prayerfully to reflect on the mysteries of the faith and on the lessons of the saints. Most appropriately identified with the season of Lent are the Stations of the Cross. Graphically and prayerfully Jesus’ final hours are offered for reflection and resolution. His agony atoned for our offences. The Liturgy of Hours, long required of priests, has become more meaningful to many lay persons. And, appropriate to this day and age, these prayers are as accessible on one’s cell-phone! IBreviary.com will tell all.
A daily Lenten Rosary, the perennial prayer of the devout, would again review the mysteries of Christ’s life. Certainly the reading of Scripture, long missing from daily Catholic life, is a routine that needs aggressive cultivation! Visits to the Blessed Sacrament in an open church or exposed at a few chapels are a pious devotion recently encouraged by our bishops during the Holy Year. Some parishes will offer a Lenten Day of Recollection and, of course, Catholic television and radio programs are handily available for all!
While Lent is indeed a time for devout prayer and pious reflection, an authentic spirit of interior renewal and personal reform will also arouse a deeper concern for God’s world around us. Modern society is rightly becoming more and more respectful of God’s material world but the true Christian will faithfully maintain the Church’s practical good works toward the unborn, the poor, the sick, the housebound, the elderly and today especially the homeless and the immigrant.
In this Sunday’s first reading from Genesis, the sacred author relates that Eve’s sin, and Adam’s as well, was a sheer act of self-concern: “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom” (Gn.2:13). Our first parents erred in considering their own gratification, their own welfare, their own comfort. The true Christlike spirit will rather extend outward toward the larger worlds of church, society and nature, perhaps imitating the thoughtful heavenly ministers observed at the end of Christ’s temptations: “...angels came and waited on him” (Mt.3:10).
