Don't Put Down What You've Picked Up For Lent

Lent is here. The Ash Wednesday services were packed to standing room only. Morning Mass has doubled in attendance. Many faithful Catholics take on Lenten penances and practices. But come Easter Monday, it is almost with a sense of relief that we return to the routines of our days, Lenten practices forgotten till the next time Lent comes around.

Someone I know, who had a real problem with alcohol, would piously give up drinking for Lent, only to get horribly drunk again on Easter Sunday.

One of our priest friends, commenting on the phenomena of Lenten zeal that dissipates on Easter morn, used to say with a twinkle in his eye, “We rise on Ash Wednesday and die on Easter Sunday”.

But jokes aside, Lent is a pretty serious matter. It’s a time to look to the real matters of living …… and dying. It’s a time to stop building bigger barns (Luke 12 16-21) and start stripping down to basics. It’s a time to shed what is keeping us from moving ahead in our walk with the Lord and start acquiring those virtues that will help us to grow in holiness. Lent is a matter of life and death.

So considering this, let’s look at some practices picked up at Lent that are important to keep.

1. Mass – a keeper. Have you started going to daily mass for Lent? Don’t stop! Build your day around it. Let your day be strengthened by the daily food of the Eucharist. The graces are immense. So keep at it, and take a friend along.

2. Scripture reading and spiritual books – don’t let that go – as St. Jerome said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”. And besides, seeing the way the world is getting, you need to know the reason for your faith, because you will be called to defend it.

3. Confession – the Church encourages us to go to confession during Lent – weave that routine into the fabric of your spiritual life. Confession keeps our soul clean. Life is so hard to get around with heavy emotional baggage and sin. So confession is another keeper.

4. Prayer and devotions – if you’ve started saying the Rosary for Lent – keep those Rosary beads in your front pocket – keep saying it daily. The graces are many that come from the recitation of the Rosary. The intercession of our Blessed Mother helps us in our needs and molds us more and more in conformity with her Son Jesus Christ.

5. Fasting – Besides the two days we are called on to fast, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and Friday abstinence from meat, many of us take on fasting on other days and in different ways. Some people give up drinking alcohol or smoking (which I think is a favor done to our bodies, and not to mention the second hand smoke that those around us are spared from) or other habits that are not too good for us. Anything harmful to the body that’s given up, I’d say that it’s best not to pick it up again. And come Easter when we resume our routines, it’s wise to exercise temperance in all that we do.

6. Almsgiving and charitable acts – I am glad we have the practice of almsgiving during Lent, where we are encouraged to give to those who need help. But when the season of Lent is over, I would like us to think of the poor widow who put in two mites into the temple’s treasury, she who gave out of her poverty, and remember Jesus commending her act of charity. We must give in the measure we receive, and may God give us a heart of generosity.

My friends, I write this that we might encourage each other in our Christian walk. With every season that comes and goes, we are a little closer to when we will meet the Lord. And when we do so, we want to be ready. For as it is said in Scripture, “now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”.