Message from Fr. Darling

With the arrival of Ash Wednesday this week our season of Lent begins. On an individual note remember that Lent is like a spiritual spring training. Just like the Tigers go to Florida to relearn skills that they are already supposed to have mastered, so we do the same spiritually during Lent. Our disciplines are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It isn’t that we don’t know how to practice these disciplines but that rather during the year we get lazy or distracted and we don’t practice these disciplines. Hence, we unlearn all of those good habits that are supposed to be based on those values of Christ of loving our God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, and of loving our neighbor as ourselves. During Lent we go back to the basics and relearn them because if we don’t get the basics correct then we will not get anything else correct in our lives. It would be like building our houses on mud instead of on rock.

We need to remember that Lent is not a time for us to punish ourselves. God takes no pleasure in our misery. Instead the season of Lent is the time for us to let ourselves be retaught. So, the goal of Lent is not to make ourselves and those around us miserable because we are “punishing” ourselves by giving up something like food or coffee or television or our phones, etc., but rather the time for us to learn for the first time or to relearn how to use those good things in ways that are good for us and not harmful to us. Food or coffee or television or a phone can be a blessing or a curse depending how we use it. There is nothing in and of itself that is good or bad – rather how we use it determines if it is something good or bad for us, a blessing or a curse. Lent is the time when we go back and put the things of our lives into their proper places such that they are serving us and we are not serving them. For instance, if your phone is your god and controls your life turn it off for an hour and learn that the world will not come to an end if you don’t have the phone buzzing at you constantly. Lent is a time for us to get our priorities back in the right order if they have become misordered in our lives.

Another misuse of the season of Lent is someone who gives up something during Lent as a sacrifice only to return to that something as soon as Lent comes to an end. If it is something that has become out of proportion in our life such that we say eliminating it would be a good thing for us then why when the season of Lent comes to an end would we go back to that something that we have concluded is bad for us such that it is good to give it up during Lent? How have we grown spiritually be returning to that which we have determined to be a fault of ours? If I cut out junk food during Lent as I have determined it to be unhealthy for me why would I return to that unhealthy behavior once Lent has ended? Our Lenten penances should be positive things we do or negative things we avoid to help ourselves grow closer to God and to one another. The question to ask is what do I need to add to my life or to eliminate from my life or to increase or decrease in my life in order to help myself grow in holiness. Then the season of Lent will become a productive time for us on our road to imitating Christ.