Lent Is With Us Again

The season of Lent is here again with us.  One of the really great things I love about being Catholic and belonging to the Holy Roman Catholic Church – apart from the fact that the Catholic Church is the only Christian Church that can be traced all the way back to Jesus Christ, and was established by Jesus himself – is the fact that the Church is so filled with very rich traditions, teachings and seasons that help us to remember.  For example, the season of Lent is upon us, and reminds the Church about the mercy of God, as we are called to “Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15).

Like the Holy Eucharist, where Jesus invites us to “do this in remembrance of me,” it is very important that we remember all the seasons that the Catholic Church puts before us; for it is in remembering that we become.  It is in remembering God’s call to us His children, to repent and believe the Good News, that our lives are transformed more and more into the people that God has called us to be.

Lent is a penitential season that runs for forty days, starting with Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded who or  rather what we are – dust.  When the priest or lay minister applies the ash on our forehead in the form of a cross with the words, “Remember man that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” it is a wake up call for us of who we are, and more-so, how very much God loves us; for the Psalmist tells us,

“As tenderly as a father treats his children, 
so Yahweh treats those who fear Him; 
He knows what we are made of,
He remembers that we are dust.”
(Psalm 103: 13-14)

 God knows who we are and what we are made of.  Yet He who is almighty, He who is all-powerful, treats us as tenderly as a father treats his children.  That is absolutely amazing.  Lent is meant to remind us of this.

During the forty days of lent, we are called to prayer and fasting just as Jesus did in the wilderness (Matthew 4).  We are called to repentance and to turn our hearts back to our Maker, surrendering our sinfulness to HIm. The challenge for us as Catholics is to move from operating in the zone of obligation, into the ‘love zone’, where we do things, where we live out of faith not out of obligation but rather out of love; love for God and love for our brothers and sisters.  If we approach this season of lent out of love and not obligation, we will have a much more powerful conversion experience.  If we live out this season of lent in a spirit of love and openness, then the eyes of our hearts will become opened and m ore in tune with the immense, unthinkable and in-comprehensible love of God; and there is only one thing that happens when we come to experience God’s love; we are transformed; our lives are changed more and more into the image of God.

As we are reminded that we are dust, may that cause us to realize how much we need God every day of our lives.  As we journey through this forty-day period of prayer and self-denial in the desert of our sinfulness, may God grant us the grace to die to ourselves, to die to our selfishness and sin, so that we will rise with Him in the newness of life.