Forty Days

A bright orange light crashed through my windows this morning waking me, reminding me that I was still alive, reminding me to say a prayer of thanks.

Lent is a time of preparation for Easter; it, also, is a time of education as we learn how to sacrifice, how to love each other, how to love God. These Forty Days teach us that we are human beings reaching for goodness, reaching for holiness, reaching for the Divine. We fast, we pray, we give. Each year Lent is a halting point, a beautiful time of purification when we should examine our conscience and determine if we are on the path that God wants us to be on. We must be on guard against allowing any sin or vice to cloud our view, to settle within my mind. We are preparing our hearts and souls, preparing our hearts and souls for God. He will appear before us, within us; if our gaze is direct and our hearts are pure we will see him. The literature of Lent encourages each Christian to increase their prayer, fasting, almsgiving in the name of the Lord. There are volumes of prayer books to help with our daily reflections. Lent is a time for each of us to personally supervise our prayer and repentance; we must look within our hearts and ask God for forgiveness for all our sins. The Church provides a wonderful backdrop for penance and reflection. Each Mass has special readings which provide many good things to contemplate about obedience, sacrifice, humility, charity. During these Forty Days our attention to God must gradually increase each day as we learn more about ourselves and how to be God’s humble loving servants. Catholics have the distinction of noticing their sins and then asking for God’s absolution. Lent is a time when we can review our lives, summarize our successes and failures and try to move closer to God.

Lent reminds us of the wilderness, of haunting and taunting sin. How each of us pray and serve God during Lent can be supremely lyrical, gently poetic, imaginative, passionate. I hope that we each remember that Lent is a deeply spiritual time. There is a real reason why we are not eating chocolate, watching television. We must always remember Christ in the desert. We must always allow Lent to inspire our thoughts, our prayers, our love. The Church asks us, reminds us to move beyond the trite and decorous and clamorous, to take a breath, to seek silence, to yearn for the deepest unity with God, to pray, to hope, to love. Lent is a musical season of heroic, lyric verses performed within each of our minds hopefully, we are able to hear the simple melody, to find our private place in the desert to reflect upon our lives, to find God. Our Spiritual lives need these Forty Days to help focus us on God.

When possible stop by the Cathedral, kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. Just walk into your parish church and sit in silence. Say any prayer that you can remember or think of or just simply say hello to God. Lent is time when hopefully we are able to slow down, give thanks for our baptism, give thanks for the Eucharist, give thanks for our continuing conversion.