We are now well into the season of Lent. Many of us have adopted or renewed spiritual disciplines such as prayer and fasting and works of mercy. Before we go much farther along the Lenten road, it is good to remind ourselves just why we take on spiritual disciplines. That’s because, without meaning to do it, we can turn Lent into a period of self-absorption in the very spiritual disciplines intended to deepen our walk with Christ.
This is why Lent can become so tiresome once we get about halfway into it. The problem is not that life loses its meaning without chocolate or that we exhaust ourselves with spiritual exertion.
Let me speak just for myself. I am not interesting enough to hold my own attention for 40 days! And yet that is what we will try to do this Lenten season, unless we make an effort to enter into the true spirit of Lent.
Our struggle with Lent begins with importing some assumptions from popular culture into an ancient Church practice. We are a self-improvement culture.
We refrain from food to look better, feel better, live longer, or snag a hot date. We change old habits or acquire new ones to be more effective, successful, popular, or, as one popular evangelist puts it, to be our best self.
I’ve been on a diet. I’ve studied leadership. I’m healthier and more competent as a result. But that is not the point of Lent.
The point of Lent is to discover once again that we are loved beyond reason.
Lent is a period of preparation for our celebration of the new life given to us as a gift in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So long as we are playing the self-improvement game, we are focused on ourselves and on the life we can make for ourselves. Lent urges us to follow a different path, namely, the path of humility and openness to the life that God wants to give us through his Son.
By long tradition we have taken on additional spiritual practices during the season of Lent. The Church commends to us the spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, and works of mercy.
Our obsession with self-improvement leads us to pursue these disciplines in order to make ourselves better people. All too often the motivation driving this pursuit is the desire to finally make ourselves good enough to win God’s approval and to secure our neighbor’s affection or admiration.
We all know that there is always room for improvement and always something we need to hide or put a spin on. So it comes as no surprise to any of us that the pursuit of self-improvement will only keep us anxiously focused on ourselves and ever vigilant about our own inadequacies.
In contrast to the path of self-absorbed anxiety, Lent offers a God-centered rather than a self-centered way. Fasting, prayer and charitable works provide us means by which to get out of ourselves and to focus on the greater good, on the needs of others, and on what God’s grace can do through us.
We take on these disciplines not in order to get closer to measuring up to a demanding God’s impossible standards. Instead, we fast, we pray, and we serve the marginalized to be free from the tyranny of our own egos and to be free for the gift of life and love that God offers us.
