Dear Saints,
The purpose of Lent, Pope Francis once said, is to stop pretending the world revolves around us, and to center our existence instead on God.
That’s not a risk-free adjustment. When God is relegated to the periphery of our lives, he generally can’t cause too much trouble. But there’s no telling what will happen when we make him the very center. His love is a wild force and we have no control over it. He might change anything. He might change everything. And yet, as anyone who has tried it both ways can attest, there’s good reason to make the shift from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. The former anesthetizes us into dead men walking; the latter enlivens us into saints seized by the energy of heaven itself.
The challenge is that, deadening as it is, the temptation to self-orbit remains both powerful and perpetual. So the Church invites us into three Lenten disciplines to help us develop a firm disposition of God-centeredness: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These are not boxes to be checked. No one gets a prize, either in this world or the next, for having observed the strictest Lent. They are instead opportunities to stop pretending, as Pope Francis would say. Every small but sincere act of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving brings us closer to our true center.
By definition, that’s an intensely personal and private undertaking. There are of course some time-tested guidelines to help us get started, but your best bet is to ask God to make his forty-day plan for your life known to you. You can be sure he has one for each of us; after all, he’s wanted to be our sun ever since he formed us. To be clear, that’s not a power trip on his part. His life is perfect - and perfectly satisfying - no matter which way we spin. He wants it for our sake and our sake alone.
Finally, even as Lent is a personal journey, it need not be isolated or isolating. Like all endurance challenges, there are points at which it really helps to have a friend or two. We’ve got a number of communal experiences on the horizon, and I hope you’ll join in. Our parish is better for your participation, and I think your Lenten experience will be greatly enriched by these events.
I pray this Lent will be a season of genuine refocus. Come Easter, may each of us be a testament to the unflagging vitality and unstoppable power of a truly God-centered life.
Christ’s Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ