Ash Wednesday

Sorry I have been MIA lately. It’s that point in the quarter again when things start getting hectic.

Just a few short thoughts about Ash Wednesday and Lent. You hear a lot around this time in the liturgical season about things you can “give up” for Lent–chocolate, coffee, alcohol, etc.  This is a practice that, for many of us, started when we were kids. And, as a child with a child’s spirituality, it was perfectly appropriate for me to give up candy for Lent. After all, it was a sacrifice, it was a daily reminder of the fact that it was Lent, and it helped me to be all the happier when Easter finally arrived and I could go face down into that hollow chocolate bunny.

But there’s something missing from this when it is viewed from a more mature spiritual standpoint. Namely, it’s all about me! Can I actually give up coffee this year for Lent? Won’t this be a great time to break my sugar addiction? Me, me, me. It contracts an adult’s spirituality, because even the best-intended sacrifices have a tendency to redirect the focus on oneself.

Pope John Paul II started encouraging people to do one nice thing a day for someone else during Lent, and I think that’s a good start for someone who is used to the “giving up” pattern of our childhood Lenten seasons. Why? Because contrary to the contraction described above, such a commitment can cause each of us to expand outward instead of contract inward.

Lenten practices don’t have to be painful or cause you to suffer. At their best, they can be practices that bring you closer to the potential with which God created you. For example, a fine Lenten practice for someone with a busy life and neglected marriage might be to commit to one date night a week. It’s something that requires an amount of discipline, but it brings your relationship closer to the blessed covenant that God created it to be in the first place. Or, for somebody that struggles with body image, it might be committing to saying once every day in the mirror, “Darn, you are sooooooo beautiful!” Get the idea?

Many people want their Lenten practices to remind them of Christ’s suffering. Okay, I get that. But why did Christ suffer for us? How can we better show our gratitude to such a salvific act than to align the faltering elements of our lives closer to God’s image? It’s our way of saying, “I realize what you did, Jesus–and I promise, it wasn’t for nothing.” It think that is a better attitude than to dwell on how much strife we can experience in 40 days.