It’s Not Too Late to Start Lent

I was Confirmed as a Catholic during the summer of 1996. My first Lent, the following year, was something I joyfully anticipated. I spent many hours praying about what I would “give up” in order to unite myself more fully to God. About a week before Lent began that year, I received a phone call from my mother-in-law, Mary.

She gently but forcefully guided me through what might be more realistic fasts for a mother of young children with a busy schedule. Mary was clear throughout the conversation that this would not be a lesser penance. I was not letting God down by not doing the most difficult thing I could think of. Offering our fast with great love and uniting ourselves to Christ is the point of the exercise, not difficulty for difficulty’s sake.

Despite her amazingly helpful advice before my first Lent, I have regularly taken on inappropriately drastic fasts on occasion since then. I flame out and require the humility to dust myself off and select something else. I am not talking about the many times I fail out of pride, stupidity, and neuroses. I mean the times I say I’m going to read the Catechism for Lent or stop driving and ride my bike or walk everywhere I need to go for 40 days. I’m sure there are people who are saintlier than I and whose lives are structured that those might be reasonable, but mine has not been up to this point. And I need to have the humility to select something that I can offer with love for 40 days.

When I take on something beyond what I can do it is generally because I am engaging in a combination of spiritual pride and wishful thinking. I want to offer the most extreme thing I can think of to Jesus. I want to suffer and join that suffering to His. I want to be like the saints I admire so much who never shied away from the spiritual battle.

But I must remind myself that God has called us to our own paths toward sainthood. I am not Saint Rita or Saint Monica. It is my job to discover what God wants me to do with my life. At some point that might include living on the Eucharist, but I must be prudent in discerning that call or the call to anything else that seems like it is beyond what my state in life would seem to include. Fr. John Burns has talked about the mortification of figuring out the first thing you want (for him a bacon double cheeseburger with barbecue sauce), then selecting the second thing to eat. I do this with food, but I also think about it with tasks. If my first choice is to sit and write, perhaps I go mop the floor first and then write. If you can then move to the third choice, that will even be a better mortification. So instead of mopping I might dust or change the bed linens. Yes, this is a small thing. Yet, how many times do I thoughtlessly eat exactly what I want because of the opulence of American life, or engage in my favorite task without even praying with adequate gratitude for such a luxurious life.

The point of Lent or any mortification is not to do hard things for hard things’ sake. Self-discipline and willpower are temporal goods. We should work toward fortitude and prudence in all areas of our lives, but difficulty for difficulty’s sake will not necessarily lead us to them. The point of the Catholic life is to become Christlike. I should become less Jennifer and more Jesus during Lent. If I fail at that goal, it really won’t matter what fasting, almsgiving, and prayers I take on for 40 days.  

It’s not too late. If you have failed as I have so often, get to Confession, pick something else, and get to it. If you are struggling, get to Confession, recommit, and get to it. If you are sailing through Lent without difficulty – get to Confession, ponder if you picked the right mortification, and get to it. An extra hour of Adoration before holy week might be a good fit for all of us, as He can shine His light directly upon us.