And so Lent begins. Another Lent full of dreams of transformation. Or maybe just survival.
I wonder at the people who get excited about Lent. Lent has been rebranded in recent years. Parish programs promise a “Lent you will love” or the “Best Lent Ever!”
Yes, Lent is good. Fruitful. Necessary. Even beautiful. But I find every year that it is also grueling. It is following Our Lord into the desert for 40 days. For 40 days I come face-to-face with my faults, lack of charity, all the thin spots of my personality that I have so conveniently filled in with the noise or temporary pleasures of the world. Rilke tells us that it is not our acceptance of sensual pleasures that is bad, rather “the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as a distraction.”

Lent is the hardest work we do all year.
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