Lent: Ashes To The Cross – A Season Of Renewed Faith

The season of Lent in the Liturgical Calendar began this year on March 1^st with Ash Wednesday. This period of forty days of preparation for The Resurrection Of Our Lord on Easter Sunday, is marked by increased prayer, service, and devotion to sacred rituals such as receiving Penance and Holy Communion more frequently.

The word Lent is derived from “Spring” and it is meant to be a renewal of our faith and our prayer life. The word Lent can also evoke memories for Catholics of giving up chocolate or candy for the forty days, or of some interesting concoctions of fish that our parents may have attempted on a meatless Lenten Friday.

However, the Catholic Church desires for Lent to be about much more than giving up chocolate or ice cream, and to be about far more than just having to give up meat on Fridays. The traditional focal points of Lent are: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. The approach and action in each area is seen by the Church as being very personal in nature. The guidelines are available on the website for your local parish or local diocese.

First, prayer is an area which should be renewed and increased during Lent. The approach to this is very personal and increasing the practice of prayer involves an evaluation of how much you pray daily on a regular basis. A good example is if you pray once a day in the morning, then in Lent you should consider getting up earlier to spend more time in prayer.

Another suggestion would be to set aside prayer in the morning and in the evening, perhaps on the commute to and from your occupation. The other suggested practice from the Catholic Church is to attend Mass more regularly during Lent, a good starting point is one extra day a week besides Sunday. I have known people who try to attend three times during the work week, and I know others who attend Mass daily during Lent, again these are all very personal choices.

I will suggest in my own experience, especially if you have a very busy work schedule, you should not try to commit yourself to a set schedule for the daily Mass portion of the Lenten observation of increased prayer time. I benefit greatly from going an extra couple of days per week to Mass, but for example if I committed to every Tuesday and Friday, and then something came up and I could not attend on one or both of those days, I could get very discouraged.

That type of discouragement could “throw off” the rest of my Lenten plans for that whole week. Therefore, it is important to build flexibility into the plan but also holding yourself accountable for achieving your weekly goals in Lent.

The second area of focus in Lent is fasting, and again this is a very personal area for religious observation. The Church lays the ground rules down for us in this area: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of fasting and abstaining from meat. The full rules are on the website for your diocese. Those days of fasting allow for two snacks and one small meal. The small meal should be proportional to the two smaller snacks and should be of reduced portion. The remainder of the Fridays in Lent are days of abstinence from meat.

The approach to fasting varies based on the individual and their situation; in order to clarify the Church has exceptions for the elderly, those with health issues that fasting would make worse, and for those doing hard labor or with very physically demanding job requirements.

I know Catholics who observe fasting every Friday (even outside of Lent) the old school way: the “black fast” which is bread and water for the entire day. I know Catholics who observe fasting another traditional way on both Wednesday and Friday in Lent with the reduced food intake rules I stated earlier. My advice would be to try different forms of fasting, but be dedicated to it for the entire Lenten season. I understand in our culture that fasting is an unpopular concept, but it does help the body and the mind prepare for a renewed focus on prayer and service.

It is through fasting that you will encounter feelings of true dependence on God, a connection to people who are less fortunate that go hungry daily, and the focus that comes from not having to think about what you will eat that day. That focus instead can be put toward building a deeper relationship with God in prayer.

The third focus area for Lent is almsgiving, or works of charity. This is also an area of personal choice. The amount of charitable works can depend on a variety of factors that must be determined by the individual. The Church has taken a position more recently to the effect of instead of focusing on giving up something, focus on either adding something new to your faith life or donating your time to service in helping those in need.

The ways to achieve this third area of almsgiving are fairly wide open. Some examples are to volunteer at a soup kitchen, a food bank, or a hospital. It could be informal such as visiting people in a nursing home/care facility, or donating gently used clothing or non-perishable food items to a local charity.

The challenge to this third focal area of Lent is similar to any other added activity into our given routine: finding the time. The time spent doing service or charitable works might be in the early morning, it might have to occur in the evening, if you work nights it may require a sacrifice of your night off. The fact is that once the time is carved out, it will make a huge positive difference in your life.

The season of Lent focuses on preparing ourselves for Holy Week and Easter. It traces our path of an increase in faith from ashes on Ash Wednesday reminding us all to repent, through Holy Thursday and the Institution of the Holy Eucharist, to Good Friday and The Passion and Death of Our Lord, and culminating on Easter Sunday and His Glorious Resurrection.

The repentance, reflection, increase in prayer, commitment to receiving the Holy Eucharist more frequently, fasting to reaffirm our reliance on God, and charitable works for those in need in our communities; all of these aspects combine to prepare ourselves to be renewed by Our Risen Lord on Easter.

Lent prepares our heart, our soul, and our mind to receive the promise of salvation that Jesus won for us all on The Cross, and to celebrate His living within us all each day. It is a call for us as One Body of Christ to go forward and rebuild His Kingdom each day in a fallen world.

May this season of Lent prepare you and your loved ones for the coming of the Lord again on Easter Sunday. May Our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ be with you and bless you all forever. May The Holy Spirit guide you through this period of Lent to a deeper devotion to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving so that we may serve others as the hands and feet of Our Lord in the world. May Almighty God bless you always.