Lent: Get Back Up!
So… It’s Lent. Maybe you are like me. You know all the things that Lent is supposed to be. Generally, it’s not easy; or at least you know it isn’t supposed to be. You give something up; usually something that is a bit of a sacrifice. You try to add a good thing, or maybe two. Prayer. Fasting. Almsgiving. All of the things meant to help you detach from those things that hinder your walk with the Lord, or prevent you from following him as closely as you should. Lent is a time of drawing near to the Lord in the midst of the desert. It is a time of choosing whom you will serve, and saying to the Lord, “Yes, Lord, I love you more!”
But… Then you mess up; or at least if you are anything like me you do. Sometimes the ambition we have for Lent quickly fades as quickly as a day or two, or, maybe, three days in. Like the New Year’s Resolution, our intentions for Lent, can get swept away by busyness, stubborn habits, distractions and the demands of daily life, or at least the things that seem to demand our attention.
It can become easy to fall into discouragement during Lent. This is true no matter how long you have been walking with the Lord. As I celebrate my tenth year as a Catholic this Easter, I would think I would be “better” at Lent by now… But… There is no such thing. In fact, this Lent, I am learning the truth of my own words, “If you think you are good at Lent, you are not.” No. It’s not true that I have ever thought I was “good” at Lent. Truth be told, such thinking sounds a bit like pride. What is true however, is that so far – just one week in – I am realizing just how bad I am at Lent. More accurately, I am learning just how dependent I am upon God’s grace to keep me on the right path.
For several years my family has had a plant-based diet. With that, we often would need some adaptation for Lent as not eating meat on Fridays was no sacrifice for us; at least it didn’t seem that way. For me, this year, that has changed a bit. With the discovery of a gluten allergy, I’ve needed to adjust my diet and have begun eating meat again. The primary focus has been on “gluten free.” To be honest, we had eaten largely a vegan diet for long enough that the “no meat” rule seemed an afterthought…. I kind of forgot! And so here I was, the first Friday in Lent this year… a former vegan… Eating meat on a Friday. However, I had already begun to feel like I just was not measuring up to the MY expectations for Lent this year… I felt awful. Three days in.
The next morning I awoke to find these words in my mind:
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is thy faithfulness.
These words come from Lamentations 3:21-24. For me it was a reminder that I can’t do this holiness thing on my own. I can’t do it in my own strength. No amount of willing my own sanctification will ever help me if I am not leaning on Christ, abiding in him, allowing his grace to animate my life, and allowing the Holy Spirit to renew my own heart.
Are we called to holiness? Absolutely! Will Lent help us get there? Yes. If we allow God’s grace to work in and through us in the midst of the desert, we certainly will. We have this PROMISE from the Lord: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). There are two ways to approach perceived “failure” during Lent. One, I think is too just give up. To ultimately settle for mediocrity. It’s hard to “fail” if we have no expectations. This is to fall and refuse to get back up again. To look at the example of so many great saints and say, “Yeah, that worked for you, but it doesn’t seem to work for me.” St Paul, apostle and author of half the New Testament, wrote, “The things that I want to do I don’t, and the things that I don’t want to do, I do” (Rom 7:15-20. IF that was true for St Paul, how much more true is it for us?
This Lent we must remember that the Lord’s mercies are new every morning. That the only time we fail is when we refuse to get back up again; more accurately, when we fail to allow God’s grace to embrace us and lift us up and set us back on the right path. This was true of the saints, its true for us.
St Maximilian Kolbe is helpful here:
“In spite of having followed faithfully the inspiration of divine grace, the saints are men and women just like ourselves, and their actions and words usually carry the characteristic markings of their own environment…”
There is one thing that all the saints have in common. This one thing is something we can share in now. Where we are. Today. This Lent, and for the rest of this Lent. Saints are simply people who love God. Saints are people who love God and are so stubborn in that love that when they fall, when they fail, they refuse to stay down. They get back up again. In some ways stronger. With a holy boldness. Recognizing their need for Christ all the more. Maximillian Kolbe, himself now a saint, says this so explicitly: “The widespread idea that the saints were people dissimilar to us, is false. Even they had to endure temptations, even they fell and got up again, even they were oppressed by sadness, weakened and paralyzed with discouragement..” They were mindful of Jesus’ words that apart from him we can do nothing (Jn 15:5); that he is our strength for everything (Phil 4:13). “They did not rely on themselves, but putting all their trust in God, after every fall they humbled themselves, honestly repenting and purifying their soul in the sacrament of penance, and then continued immediately to work with even greater zeal. In this way, every fall was useful to them as a small step towards an even greater perfection, and their burden always became lighter.”
