In these days we are continuing our Lenten pilgrimage. For the next six weeks we are urged by the Church to concentrate on separating ourselves from our sinfulness and in that way to prepare for Holy Week and Easter.
Especially at the beginning of Lent, we need to pray for the grace of honesty. One of the temptations of our weakened humanity is to fail to examine our consciences from God’s point of view. In that case, we can end up looking away from our faults or somehow excusing ourselves instead of confronting the sin that separates us from God and from each other.
True repentance requires the will to acknowledge, as we say at Mass, “that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.”
Spiritual discipline is required because the process of conversion, for many, requires time. Only rarely is it in the mode of St. Paul, something immediate as a flash of lightning.
Our 40 days of penance and charity during Lent follows the example of Jesus in the desert where He was tempted by Satan, as we heard in the Gospel last Sunday. But it is also a recognition that spiritual purification and renewal most often happens little by little, by repeated exercises involving prayer and reflection. St. Francis de Sales states in his writings, The Introduction to the Devout Life, “The ordinary purification, whether of body or souls, is only accomplished by slow degrees, step by step, gradually and painfully.”
For this reason, we do well to put together a plan of attack for Lent. Each of us needs to identify what sinfulness in our lives needs prayer and resolution to break it off or to avoid those sins going forward. At the same time, we should reflect on how we can work to deepen what is already good in our spiritual lives. How can we grow in love for God during this Lent?
Again, St. Francis de Sales is a wise guide for us. He comments that in seeking spiritual purification and penance, people often encounter two obstacles. The first is to grow discouraged in a short time because they don’t sense themselves to be progressing spiritually. They find that despite their initial efforts, they fall again into the same sins.
The second temptation is just the opposite: to feel that the struggle to change our hearts is won quickly and easily. In this case one declares victory too quickly, with the wounds of sin only superficially healed.
In both cases, counsels St. Francis de Sales, we are at risk of relapsing into the same pattern of life.
The 40 days of Lent invite us to seek slow but continual spiritual renewal. It is a time that requires reflection. Going to Mass, on Sundays of course but perhaps even a time or two during the week as well, is the greatest spiritual blessing. Fasting, even in small ways during the week, and joining the abstinence on Fridays of Lent is a means of discipline that concentrates the mind on Christ.
As always, confession during Lent should be a must for each of us. It is the sacrament of Jesus’s own forgiveness, renewed again and again as we need it in our spiritual lives.
Don’t forget that our annual Be Reconciled Day will be held on April 9. As usual, on that day all the parishes in the Diocese of Rockford will seek to offer confession from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. (Be sure to check your parish bulletin for the exact hours).
As always, I personally invite and appeal to those who have not come to confession for a long time: please come this Lent, perhaps even on Be Reconciled Day. Each year our priests help many in this situation.
If we contribute the effort and the discipline, we can be confident that God will not be less than generous in giving us the graces we need to make this a purifying and successful Lent.
