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This Holy Season of Lent
Well, Ash Wednesday has come and gone and we have begun the
holy season of Lent.
No doubt, those of us who are “cradle Catholics” remember what
we gave up as children: candy or our favorite television show. Now that we
are adults, we might want to challenge ourselves to see this Lent
differently from the other 25 or 50 or 60 or 70 Lents which we’ve sometimes
groaned our way through. The word “lent” actually has to do with
“springtime” because it is meant to bring us to deeper growth in our
relationships with God and with each other.
So, what practice of doing something or giving something up
will help my spiritual growth this Lent? As Nancy Small writes in her Pax
Christi article, “How will I break open my heart to allow God’s tender and
transforming grace to enter?” Prayer, fasting and almsgiving are the
traditional Lenten practices because they affect our hearts, our bodies and
our pocketbooks! Like the simple act of fasting from eating between meals
which we did on Ash Wednesday, all of our practices should cause us to
pause. On a fast day, I can’t take the orange which looks so appetizing at 3pm. I have a choice at that moment: do I complain? Or do I offer that tiny
sacrifice for the people who don’t have oranges or any food, for that
matter? If I or my household decided to pray before each meal, what kind of
difference would that make over these 40 days? If we can’t make the Friday
stations and simple meal, could we choose another night of the week to eat
simply? Or, for some families, could we make a real effort, with everyone’s
work, class and sports schedules to simply eat together a couple of times
during Lent? For those of us who prefer fish to other meals, not eating meat
on Friday isn’t much of a sacrifice. So what else might we do to remind
ourselves that Jesus died on a Friday? God is the one who can “change our
hearts” as we sing, but we need to open ourselves to the working of the
Spirit.
As you’re already aware if you read the bulletin, we’re
focusing our almsgiving this Lent on the anti-malaria bed nets. We’re
connected to a group you can find on the web
www.nothingbutnets.net
if you’d like to check them out. Malaria, long eradicated in the
industrialized world, continues to debilitate and kill. Imagine watching
your child die of a disease which could easily be prevented. Malaria snuffs
out the lives of 3,000 children a day in the tropical countries of Africa.
For $10 per pesticide-treated net, we can save these children. They are our
brothers and sisters.
Peace, S. Sheral |
