By Monsignor Kevin Royal, pastor of St. Mary Parish in Ridgefield
This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, and so, Lent begins. Let’s reflect.
“What are you giving up for Lent?”
I know someone who lived his Catholic faith throughout his early life and college years. He was faithful in practice, but not in spirit. He observed Lenten fasts and abstinences, but to no real transformative end.
For him, Lent was just giving something up for forty days. When Easter came, he overate what he had given up. Lent was successful, but in reality, he didn’t come though it any closer to Christ and his neighbor than before.
Maybe, to some degree, this describes you.
“Repent and be faithful to the gospel.”
A turning point came when one Ash Wednesday, the familiar words spoken at the impositions of ashes seared themselves into his heart, mind, and soul: “Repent and be faithful to the gospel.”
This is Lent, turning away from sin, being faithful to the gospel.
Fasting, prayer and almsgiving are means to that end when offered in right intention. “Lord, I fast from (chocolate, wine, etc.) to hunger more for you, your word, your righteousness. I fast so I can stop sinning and unite with your fasts. I give alms so to help the poor and to offer penance for my sins. I pray so that my heart, mind, and soul will be attentive to you and your spirit more than to anything else.
Repenting and turning away from sin and being faithful to the gospel isn’t easy. It requires grace and perseverance.
Plan your prayer, charity, and fasting for Lent (along with spiritual reading). Follow the advice of St. Benedict. Do these in moderation because right intention means more than the acts themselves. It also avoids temptation to pride. Lenten practices in moderation more easily allow for right intention and do not set us up for failure by doing something beyond our capability.
Saints Speak of Lent
“The true purpose of our Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. But fasting, prayer, alms and every good deed done for the sake of Christ is a means to the attainment of the Holy Spirit. Note that only good deeds done for the sake of Christ bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.” — St. Seraphim of Sarov
“It is not a simple matter of living through forty days. Lent is the epitome of our whole life. Lenten fasts should not be as for a diet; they should be to partake in the sufferings of Christ…temperate in eating and drinking…. [most importantly] I am not asking what food you abstain from, but what you love. Do you love Justice? Well, let your love be seen!” — St. Augustine
“Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves… What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit?… We can do without those unnecessary things which become habits, cigarettes, liquor, coffee, tea, candy, sodas, soft drinks and those foods at meals which only titillate the palate. We all have these habits, the youngest and the oldest. And we have to die to ourselves in order to live, we have to put off the old man and put on Christ. That it is so hard, that it arouses so much opposition, serves to show what an accumulation there is in all of us of unnecessary desires.” — Dorothy Day
“Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism for what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes but bite and devour our brothers.” — St. John Chrysostom
