My wife Sandy gave me the bad news— Ash Wednesday is early this year. “What are you giving up for Lent?” she asked. I shuddered because that meant I had to start my annual soul-searching, trying to think of something to give up. I hate that phrase “giving up” because quite honestly I don’t want to give up anything. I’m too weak-willed. Besides, isn’t that an old-fashioned, medieval concept unsuited for our ‘enlightened’ age?
You see, we’re from a generation that thought Lent was all about giving up something, and over the years, I’ve had my experiences—most of them unsuccessful—with giving things up, starting with candy and ice cream, then smoking and drinking, and later television and swearing, along with a few other things I better not divulge.
For much of our marriage, my wife has been pleading with me to give up spending or leaving my clothes on chairs and doorknobs. (Here’s an embarrassing confession: I’ve never been able to completely give up candy.)
I was often unsuccessful because I came from a generation—those notorious Baby Boomers—who never understood the concept of self-denial or delayed gratification because from the time we were toddlers, we were more accustomed to immediate gratification. Let me put it another way: I would not have done well in a Carthusian monastery as one of St. Bruno’s recruits.
So when Sandy asked, “What are you giving up?” I promptly responded, “Giving up? I’m just getting through a year of penance called COVID-19, which was probably the most prolonged self-denial I’ve endured in my life.”
It taught me to look at the world differently. I learned to like tuna sandwiches. I helped charitable organizations. I shared. I cared. I gave up. Worst of all, I often couldn’t go to Mass, Sunday or daily and that was particularly painful.
The year of COVID-19 taught us about sacrifice. About charity. About spiritual priorities. About turning to God. But many of those lessons, like the ones we learned after 9/11, were quickly forgotten. We’re like the Chosen People. We’re wayward and God has to keep calling us back from the enticements and false promises of the world. That’s why we need Lent.
Lent is a time for penance, fasting, almsgiving, prayer and hope. Did I say hope? More than 1600 years ago, Saint Augustine offered an observation that speaks to us today: “The season before Easter signifies the troubles in which we live here and now, while the time after Easter signifies the happiness that will be ours in the future.”
I look at it this way: Before Easter we walk with Christ on the road to Calvary. After Easter, we walk with Christ on the road to Emmaus.
This year, it’s especially important to walk with Christ through Lent to the “happiness that will be ours in the future.” Is there sadness is your life? Is there disappointment? Is there grief? Is there fear? Is there illness? Is there anxiety about our country? Then, imagine someone beside you on the journey who tells you everything is going to be all right. That someone is Jesus.
So what’s my Lenten resolution? I’m making a list and I’m checking it twice. It’s a list of people I dislike, even if I don’t know them personally. Needless to say, that list has gotten long over the past 12 months of national acrimony.
Last year was especially painful, made worse by divisive politics that tore apart families and friends and still does. If that isn’t the work of Satan, I don’t know what is.
I’m keeping that list on my nightstand, where my wife won’t see it because it includes people from her side of the family. And I’m going to pray the rosary for them every night with an ulterior motive that they might finally see the light and think the way I do. However, my true motive is spiritual. I’ll really be praying that despite our differences, we can move closer to Christ together…even if it’s along different paths.
This Lent is a time for all of us to pray for people we don’t like because I suspect their numbers have increased over the past year. So let’s get started.
I’m also going to give up something. It just might be candy.
