Dear Saints,
We’re about ready for Lent to begin. As we make our final preparations in the runup to Ash Wednesday, however, I realize that we’re in need of more than a published program of events to get us going.
I’m reaching out, then, in hopes of connecting with you in a meaningful way before we begin our Lenten journey. Please be assured of my love and my prayers these weeks – we’ll tackle the challenges of this season together, growing in sincere love for God, each other, and our neighbor as we make our way.
A couple of Sundays ago (the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time), I offered what I consider to be a mission statement for the whole of Christian living. It goes like this: We persevere, by faith, in the life of great and costly love God has called us to.
It makes sense to break that sentence down, just so we grasp the significance of its parts. I’ll try to be brief:
1. Persevere: (from Merriam-Webster) To persist in a state, enterprise, or undertaking in spite of counterinfluences, opposition, or discouragement.
2. By faith: Only by trusting and following Jesus – nourished and sustained by his own life of love – can we hope to take on the task.
3. Great and costly love: When a scholar of the law asks Jesus which commandment is the greatest, he replies, You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. The name of the game is love, and in a fallen world love usually (always?) comes at a cost.
4. God has called us to: God has chosen us, and he knew what he was doing when he did. There’s great comfort and consolation in the call!
Okay. So let me say it again. The whole of Christian living is persevering, by faith, in the life of great and costly love God has called us to.
That’s the task, my friends. I’m not insisting on the point to beat you over the head with it. I want much more for you than that: I want you to feel in your bones that this is what your life is about, and I want you to know that, wherever you’re at with it right now, we will grow into the call together.
Given the difficulties of our day, it’s worth emphasizing the point that Jesus knew what he was doing when he called us – you and me – to light up the world with God’s love. That didn’t mean, clearly, that life would be easy. It meant that he’d be with us, here and now, as we make our way down the world’s winding and difficult paths, committed to the challenge of loving his world into life, strengthened and sustained by his Spirit at work in us and working through us.
We’ve been called to follow Jesus in living lives of great and costly love, and we often feel ill- equipped for the task. Loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, and praying for those who mistreat us would be ridiculous in the extreme were it not for God giving us – breathing into us – his own life of love to sustain our every effort.
That, my friends, is the challenge of Christianity, and it’s a challenge we take on with real dedication and fervor these days of Lent. It’s ours to harness this holy season to better receive and reflect the generous other-oriented love of God, to find strength in him to live the impossible-without-Jesus life to which we’ve been called.
The goal of a good Lent is to center our hearts on God (who is love) and to become like him by giving ourselves generously away. There is no better way to grow in love of God, neighbor, and self than through the traditional Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
That’s why I’m asking again this year that we try to use this grace-filled season to build a better baseline for mature Christian living. A big part of Lent’s power is that we make this 40-day trek together, so I’m asking you to commit to taking on – with all of us, your fellow parishioners – the following three life-changing and love-enabling disciplines:
1. Pray for 30 minutes a day
2. Fast every day except for Sundays and Solemnities
3. Give a true tithe (10% to the parish)
Don’t walk away just yet! Let’s explore these challenges in practical detail. I’ll present each discipline below with steps you might take to grow into it and helpful resources for additional support.
Prayer: pray for 30 minutes a day.
1. Our commitment to praying for 30 uninterrupted minutes a day reflects the wisdom of the saints. With almost universal testimony, the Church’s spiritual masters recommend half an hour of meditative silence a day as the source of Christian life.
2. If 30 minutes at a shot is too steep an ask, start this year with 15 minutes and add five a year. Don’t be discouraged – remember that making time for God is one of prayer’s most important accomplishments, and you learn to pray by praying!
3. If you would like a resource to help launch or develop your prayer life, check out Jacques Philippe’s Time for God or Timothy Gallagher’s The Examen Prayer.
Fasting: fast every day except for Sundays and Solemnities
1. Our commitment to eating only one main and two smaller meals every day in Lent helps us to check our desire for worldly pursuits and pleasures to focus more fully on God and meeting the demands of love.
2. If smaller meals with no snacking every day is too tough, start with a day or two a week (Friday and Wednesday are traditional fasting days) and add as we go, either through Lent or from one year to the next.
3. For a concise and accessible study on fasting, I recommend Charles M. Murphy’s The Spirituality of Fasting: rediscovering a Christian practice.
Almsgiving: give a true tithe (10% to the parish)
1. In a money-driven world, there is no better way to prioritize the purposes of God than by giving the first ten percent of what we make to our parish. Almsgiving actually implies giving beyond a tithe – great if you’re there, but if not we’ll use this year to help get us to a tithing baseline.
(By definition, a tithe is a ten-percent offering to the parish. It is an act of worship, which means it is a way of centering our lives on God and his purposes. You have probably seen that OLMC’s revenues are higher than they have ever been – I am making this appeal not for the sake of our budget, but for the sake of your spiritual wellbeing.)
2. Although I’d encourage you to jump in the deep end with the tithe, we all have to start somewhere. If you can’t give ten percent now, try increasing your offering one or two percent a year until you hit a true tithe (and then we can go beyond it!). If you need help with the concept or the calculation, check out https://www.olmc.church/give.
3. For resources on tithing, I’d recommend Randy Alcorn’s The Treasure Principle: unlocking the secrets of joyful giving, or his Managing God’s Money: a biblical guide.
That’s it, my friends. No matter where we find ourselves right now, we’re ready for the best Lent of our lives. God chose you for an incredible adventure, to live this life of great and costly love. I can’t wait to see where he takes us!
If you need anything at all, my friends, please be in touch. You are in my thoughts and prayers, and I remain eager to serve you and serve with you these days.
In the Peace of Christ,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ
PS Yes, we’re taking on another beyond-the-tithe challenge this Lent. The Boonton Food Pantry is in dire need, so let’s raise at least $25,000 to feed the hungry and help fight off food insecurity for our beloved neighbor.