Into the Wilderness
By Mike Lambrecht
It’s that time of year again. The season of Lent is once again upon us—time to fast and to stop eating meat on Fridays. But there is more to Lent than just fasting and abstaining. Lent is “the season of prayer and penance before Easter. Its purpose is to better prepare the faithful for the feast of the Resurrection, and dispose them for a more fruitful reception of the graces that Christ merited by his passion and death.”1
The question is, how do we better dispose ourselves to the grace that God wishes to bestow on us? If you are anything like me, you don’t enjoy giving up meat, you almost certainly don’t enjoy starving yourself, and you are probably way too busy to think about adding more time for prayer in your life. But what message is this conveying to our heavenly Father? Do we really want to tell our Lord – the one and only God, who created us, blesses us with family and friends, gives us food, shelter, and life itself, who suffered and died one of the most agonizing deaths imaginable so that we might have life everlasting—that we are too busy to be
inconvenienced for forty days a year?
At first glance, it appears as if the Church is asking us to do the impossible. But, when the season of Lent is put into perspective, it doesn’t seem so overwhelming. Let us not forget that Jesus himself showed us how to fast. “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry.”2 There are also numerous references in the Bible to Jesus going off by himself to pray.
The Church tells us that “the whole Lenten season is to be penitential, with stress on prayer, reception of the sacraments, almsgiving, and the practice of charity.”3 In other words, during the penitential season of lent, we are being called to abstain from meat on Fridays if we are over the age of 14 and to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday if we are over the age of 18 and under the age of 60.4
Additionally, we are asked to pray more. Prayer is necessary to strengthen our relationship with God. Just as we would not expect our earthly friendships to grow if we do not stay in touch with our friends, so too, we cannot expect growth in our spiritual relationship if we do not stay connected to God in prayer. There are several practical ways that we can increase the frequency of prayer in our lives. We could volunteer for adoration in our parish chapel, pray when we wake up, before meals, before bed, or even in the midst of our busy daily lives. Our parish’s patron saint, Saint Therese of Lisieux, was a great example of praying while performing simple everyday tasks.5
Furthermore, we are asked to receive the sacraments, especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Receiving the Eucharist is the closest that we can get to God on earth and fills us with grace if we are open to receiving it. The sacrament of Reconciliation cleanses us from our sins and opens us up once again to the grace of God if we have been cut off from it by our own actions. This is why it is so important that we go to confession before receiving the Eucharist if we are conscious of any mortal sin in our lives.
Lastly, we are asked to give alms and to do works of charity. These acts show compassion to others and validate the dignity that God has implanted in each one of us by creating us in His own likeness and image. These acts can best be illustrated in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
I hope that each of you has a very blessed Lenten season. I am confident that, as we enter the wilderness of Lent, if we truly make an effort on our end to strive for holiness, God will not disappoint us.
1,3 Hardon, John A. S.J. The Modern Catholic Dictionary. Bardstown: Eternal Life, 1999.
2 RSV-CE Matthew 4:1-2
4 See Code of Canon Law canons 1249-1253.
5 See “The Story of a Soul” – The autobiography of Therese of Lisieux.