170- The Purpose of Lent

Each of us greets every Lent with the renewed desire and determination to rediscover anew the very meaning of this liturgical season, and especially to find a practical way of applying this meaning through the question we ask ourselves: “What shall I do this Lent?” 

What is Lent?

God gives His Grace to each one of us, from the Day of Pentecost onwards. The entire liturgical year has important powerful moments (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter) and "ordinary" moments: Ordinary Time.

Lent time is unique, because of the quality and the power of the specific Graces that God wants to give us during this time: in fact during Lent the power of the Grace of God can be compared to multiplying this grace by two. This is clear evidence, therefore, that God is waiting for us, giving us extra help for this sacred and more intense time of the year. The grace of God helps us to turn resolutely toward Him, to be totally focused on Him. Remember the First Commandment: you shall love God with "all" (your heart, mind, energy, soul) is repeated three or four times. The emphasis is glaringly placed on the repetition of “All.” This epitomises Lent: God reminding us who we are, and that only He can quench the thirst which invades our very being.

Lent is a time that allows us to grow spiritually so we can participate in the Passion-Death-Resurrection of the Lord more powerfully, more efficaciously and in greater depth. Lent is to enact the 40 days Jesus spent for us in the desert, fighting the three basic tendencies in us (power, pleasure, possession), and to win. He leads us, opens the way, He, in fact, is the Way. In our case, the 40 days prepare us and lead us to Holy Week and the goal for each year, is to participate then in a deeper way so as to receive the Powerful Graces of Holy Week.

Lent is a deepening of the meaning of the promises of our own Baptism. In fact Lent is a period of 40 days that prepare us for an important act: we are heading toward the Easter Vigil where we will renew the vows of our Baptism and of our commitments in the Church. It is a time of Conversion: returning to God. This always involves a 180 degree turn from the attachment and pursuit of creatures, to the attachment, the discovery and every deepening discovery of love of the Creator. 

The characteristics of this period are many. Lent, first and foremost, is a time of Prayer, more intense than in the rest of the liturgical year. Dedicating more time for Prayer is necessary in order to meet Jesus, to know Him better, to fall in love with Him! Spending long moments in silence with Him ensures this.

It is also a time for making practical offerings and sacrifices: fasting and alms giving, but also a time for deepening our Spiritual Life. To enhance this effort Lent offers us a time for drawing closer to the Word of God. Taking more time, offering a better listening capacity to the Jesus who wants to talk to us.

To inspire our efforts, reading a good book on spiritual life, meditating on it, and working on it is very advantageous. But more important than this is that in Lent we pay attention to Jesus the Groom. Jesus explained the meaning of christian fasting by saying that his disciples will fast when He, the Groom, will be absent. This means that the entire effort of Fasting and Lent is motivated by the renewed search for Jesus the Groom as we become aware of His absence from our daily life. It is the Holy Spirit who inflames our desire to find Jesus and be united with Him.

Again, at a more practical level, Lent is a time for good and deeper examination of conscience. A time for going to Confession and returning in a renewed way to God, to Jesus. At best it should involve Spiritual Direction: another person sometimes sees better what we don't see and at the very least, God confirms his grace through this humble act of consulting a Spiritual Director. Even the more practical means, above-mentioned, can at this time be deepened as new dimensions emerge, namely, fasting with our tongue, fasting with our thoughts.
It is noteworthy to add that if we are planning to fast more than what the Church asks, it is important to consult a Spiritual Director and to obey God through him/her, because the effort of obedience is regarded more favourably by God than the effort of any other sacrifice we might offer Him outside of obedience. A sacrifice offered automatically outside of obedience can, in fact jeopardise our spiritual efforts. Being outside of obedience jeopardises our spiritual effort.

In obedience to the great commandment of Jesus to love God and our Neighbour as ourselves, Lent provides the perfect time for opening our heart to those brothers and sisters we never think of: the sick, the housebound, the prisoner and especially to that special need of our own times: the growing homeless and the refugee. People we never think of. Praying, too, for those who are far from God, will show greater love for those for whom He also gave up his life on the Cross. It can be basically characterised as a time essentially of Mercy, where we ask God to give us a Merciful Heart like His. A Time where we open our hearts to our enemies, we pray for them, we are patient with them and love them, by the Grace of God.

Small Tips 

One can attend some good talks.

One can go for a retreat: short (week-end recollection), or a long one (seven days or more).

One can visit a place of Pilgrimage.

One can attend a Play or a film on the Passion. Or reflect on a Masterpiece on the Passion, reading about it, or meditating upon it. 

Advice 

- Drawing closer to the Word of God: rediscovering or intensifying the practice of Lectio Divina, based on the daily readings will reconnect us directly to Jesus, and will make of us a better conduit for the flow of the Graces of God and His Mercy from us to our neighbour.

- Meditating the Passion of the Lord is probably the most powerful tool for Growth. Linked to it is the devotion called: the Via Crucis. One can, on each Thursday evening, start to read one of the four Passions of the Gospels, from the last supper, in order to follow Jesus. If God touches us with a word or sentence, it is advisable to dwell upon them, and remain with Jesus, in prayer. This is a very powerful means to receive the grace of God and of gaining a deep and moving experience of Jesus. So, from Thursday evening onwards, one follows Jesus with the passage corresponding to the event, from the Last Supper, to the Garden of Gethsemane, including the following day, Friday, the judgement, crucifixion and death, then one remains with Mary, believing and waiting for the Resurrection, early Sunday.

- Drawing closer to Our Lady by taking some time daily to stay with her. Meditating on some texts: St Luke, "True devotion to Our Lady" (De Montfort). Our Lady is very important if we are to seek a deeper spiritual life. Therefore, discovering Her place in our life, or deepening it are very important.

Please see as well these two articles:

What is Christian Fasting?
The Power of Fasting

75: What is Christian fasting?

The human being is: body, soul and spirit. (we usually prefer the grammatical expression “is..” then: “made of” to show the unity of body-soul-spirit) 

The body, on top of all its organs, has its 5 senses, and the brain.

The soul has various faculties. The main rational ones are: mind, will and memory. Other faculties are: emotions, imagination, passions, inner senses,... . 

The spirit is the upper part of the soul, the part that enters directly into contact with God. The spirit is the very image and resemblance of God in the human being. 

Fasting exists before the coming of Jesus, in the Old Testament, in other religions before Christ (Hinduism, Buddhism,…) and in religions after Christ (Islam,…). While fasting is universal, Christ gave Fasting a new frame, a new meaning, and new means.

Jesus showed us the Way, by fasting himself for 40 days. He is our Way, and opens the Way for us. Therefore, Fasting has a very specific christian aspect to it. While Fasting, Jesus was tempted in three different ways. This moment is Jesus life, is a light on our way, to show us that we should gain control over ourselves, over our body, our senses, our desire of food.

Fasting is not anymore just a repentance, or penance or ascetical exercise. Not even only a cleansing exercise (as many claim today). It is part of the global effort that the human being makes in order to reach the fullness of his vocation as Christian: the Union with Jesus and the Perfection of Love/charity. 

Christ never separated fasting from praying. If fasting is closer to emptying our body, our tendencies to love food with excess (gluttony), praying is filling the emptiness the exercise/sacrifice of fasting created. This is why they shouldn’t be separated. We empty ourselves from our desires of eating something that pleases us, or the quantity that pleases us, but in the meantime we are invited to fill that empty-gap with prayer, with the consolation of the meditation of the Word of God. 

We are also invited to widen our understanding of fasting: It can be depriving ourselves from something we like. It goes with a renewed inner knowledge of ourselves. Fasting by “not eating” or “eating less”, has its own value. But, without neglecting fasting with food, fasting can go deeper: fasting with the eyes (not spending time with TV and/or internet,…). Fasting can be with the tongue: not saying bad words, not speaking badly about somebody, not loosing time in useless chatting. Fasting can go even deeper: controlling our own thoughts, and stopping from thinking badly about people, refraining from judging any person, … 

We fast, says Jesus, because we don’t have the Groom, Jesus Himself. We fast in order to offer as a small sacrifice, something we like, in return of our spiritual search for Jesus himself. As we see, if we deepen our understanding of fasting, the Christian Fasting, we are in for a spiritual journey that has as a goal: reaching the Groom, Jesus Himself.

We can’t transform fasting to a simple body exercise consisting in depriving ourselves from something, without looking at the frame Jesus gave it, and the means he offered. 

The main means Jesus offered for fasting is the Power of His Own Grace: the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit there is no spiritual life, there is not connection with Jesus, we can’t fast, we can’t listen to His Word. The Holy Spirit fills us with His strength, He motivates us to search for Jesus and Pray, He fills us with the Presence of Jesus. So fasting becomes a deep meeting with Jesus, and a spiritually enjoyable time. In fact, Lent time is a time were the Grace of God is doubled, in order to boost our journey to reach Union with Jesus. 

We can’t even transform fasting in a simple sacrifice, bodily exercise that we offer to God. Christian Fasting is infinitely more than that. It encompasses body, soul and spirit. It encompasses Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and a deep Spiritual Life. 

Sins come from the soul and not from the body. Jesus says: it is from the heart of the human being that come all bad things (bad thoughts, bad acts, hatred, …). Jesus said that the food enters our body and then goes away. It doesn’t bring any moral dimension as such. ("heart" in a biblical meaning means the centre of the human being)

Jesus freed us and said that all foods are good, and that there are no forbidden foods (not the case of Jews who were asked to consider some foods as forbidden, as an education matter). So food is good, but the use we make of food is not always good. It is in order to get control over our body, our gluttony, that we use “Christian fasting” (see: temperance). It is in order to learn the spiritual warfare that we fast and pray. It is in order to reach the Union with Jesus that fasting (in its deep meaning) is a Christian practise. 

The first stage of purification is the purification related to our body and to our senses. Our attachment to food and to worldly goods are the first object of fasting. We offer this or that “attachment” to Jesus, and for the sake of His Love, and therefore we fill the gap or emptiness created by this absence by meditating the Word of God, contemplating Jesus Passion, and helping the needy because Jesus is in the needy.

Remember that the money saved by eating less, or less expensive food/meals, you can put it aside and give it to the poor. Fasting humbles us, and makes us closer to the poor. Jesus is in them, and we can't forget them.

We are far of course from trying to show to anybody that we fast. This is why Jesus said: when you fast, don’t show it to others, it is a matter between you and God (with the advice of your spiritual master). 

We are far as well for the very pointless materialistic view that says: this croissant is made of butter or of oil (some Eastern Churches forbid dairy food for certain type of fasting). This would be emptying fast from its deep Christian meaning, frame, and means.