Lent is coming

February 13 is Ash Wednesday for this year, and with it we start another liturgical season of Lent. It’s good that we once again relish the true essence and purpose of the period. We actually need to do this in any part of the year to capture the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life that we often take for granted.

Pope Benedict XVI has already given out his Lenten message for this year that zeroes in on the indissoluble relation between faith and charity. It’s a wonderful message, so characteristic of his very theological mind, which should not be confined only to intellectuals and considered in strictly intellectual circuits.

It should be spread far and wide, and be made to penetrate deep and lasting in the minds and hearts of believers. That’s why we need to learn how to reflect and meditate, then assimilate what is seen and understood into attitudes, deeds, skills and virtues, and then learn how to transmit the things imbibed to others.

 In his message, the Pope precisely talks about evangelization as the greatest work of charity toward others. “There is no action more beneficial – and therefore more charitable – towards one’s neighbor than to break the bread of the word of God, to share with him the Good News of the Gospel, to introduce him to a relationship with God: evangelization is the highest and the most integral promotion of the human person.”

There’s a crying need for us to sit down and reflect on these words. Let’s hope that we can give time to this concern and exert the appropriate effort to translate these words into life, both personal and social.

At this time, we cannot afford to be casual and cavalier in this duty. The world is getting increasingly secularized and paganized, with God relegated into the sidelines, if not totally banished.

If not that, then God is not considered anymore as the transcendent God, the Supreme Being who revealed and continues to reveal himself to us. He is just a human invention. God has become a formalism, a detail of political correctness.

We are seeing this disturbing phenomenon taking place not only in individuals but also in institutions and societies, and even governments, with powerful resources to promote their own idea of God, the politically correct God.

Lent is a good occasion to go back to God. But we have to understand that as involving a lot of sacrifice and struggle. Thus, the Pope in his message says that “Christian life consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love.”

We should look forward to the discipline that Lent encourages us to live. It is truly good for us. And anyway, we cannot avoid having to grapple with suffering and ascetical struggle due to our wounded human nature. And so we really need to learn how to go through the discipline to prepare ourselves for the challenges of life.

We should see all this as part of the Good News God has given us. It should make us happy, and not too wary and afraid. We can consider it as some kind of sport and exercise that require some sacrifice but actually give us a lot more of benefits.

Truth is we need to learn the ways of spiritual combat, how to deal with our own weaknesses and do constant battle with the temptations around. We need to learn how to grow in the virtues, since we usually tend toward laziness, disorder, imprudence, vanity, pride, gluttony and lust.

Most of all, we need to learn how to know, love and serve God in a way that is directly felt and continuously done. All of this requires some kind of training, planning and a whole range of discipline. There are stages to go through, and so we need to articulate as clearly and as specifically the appropriate plans for each stage.

We obviously need to ask for grace always, since it is grace that should underlie all the efforts. Without it, we cannot go very far in our spiritual growth. And thus, aside from prayer, we need to avail of the sacraments, the usual channels for grace to come to us.

Let’s hope that this season of Lent will truly give a big boost in our spiritual life. If we try to be professional about it also, we should devise ways to see if indeed such growth has taken place at the end of Lent.

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