Yay Lent!

It's that time of year again. All the crucifixes are covered with purple cloth, you feel like you should be somber all the time, and the a-word suddenly has a different meaning. Growing up Catholic, I usually thought of Lent as an exciting challenge. It was pretty much the only time of year we would eat fish sticks, which I secretly enjoyed. The rice bowl in the center of the table was kind of neat to look at / read. And my competitive side liked the see-how-long-you-can-go-without-eating-sweets (though the actual application of it I didn't like so much). Basically, Lent was about me. (O fallen man, we can find a way to make anything be about us, huh?) Granted, I've gotten better over the years, and I'd like to think it hasn't been quite so self-centered in recent years.

But this year, I am making a conscious effort to make Lent about God, or rather to acknowledge the fact that it is about Him. My Lenten resolutions focus on removing the rocks along my path to God and loving Him more. Instead of being a competition, it is quite humbling: I have to first admit to myself that those rocks are there and that I have allowed them to be there. Then I must try to push them out of the way, and subsequently admit that they are not rocks so much as boulders and they are not easy to move.

In his homily, a priest described Lent like this: interior purification through exterior mortification. My exterior mortifications must be about purifying my soul. (Maybe that seems really obvious, and I can guarantee that I would never have argued against this, but I just didn't always practice it.) Every cookie that I don't eat, I must consciously not eat because I love Jesus more. Every glass of milk I force myself to drink, every moment in the chapel, every donation, every exterior mortification must be motivated by a desire to love Christ with the purest love that I can give Him, even when (and especially when) I don't want to sacrifice.

So while I still think that Lent is an exciting challenge, it is a challenge not because I'm competing, but because I am really not so great and it is a struggle to be virtuous. I'm excited for the struggle, though, not because struggling is fun (that is a ridiculous idea), but because through the struggles I hope to be able to love more and to clean out a better place in my heart for our resurrected Lord.



PS: Also check out Christ in the City's Lenten video series, which may or may not have anything to do with Lent... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7uqeAyCiF0.