Accepting the Challenges of Lent

Last updated on: August 22, 2014 at 3:49 pm by Rebecca Frech

Accepting the Challenges of Lent 2014-08-22T15:49:07-05:00 Rebecca Frech

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As millions of Catholics around the world mark the beginning of the Lenten Season with Masses and ashes, we take a moment also to reflect upon our lives and prayerfully consider how we can draw nearer to Our Lord through fasting, prayer and alms giving.

When I was a girl in the 1980’s there was very little focus on the purpose of the Lenten Season, a casualty of the poor catechesis of the last 40 years. We were taught instead to give up chocolate every day and meat on Fridays. It was just one more ritual in a life which was filled with them. My life was filled with rules which I didn’t fully understand, and this seemed almost more like the initiation ritual for an exclusive club than a religious observance.

Now that I am grown, I approach Lent with a new perspective. It is a time of austerity for which my soul aches every year. The sensory overload of Christmas and the New Year winds down in a frantic pace as we approach Mardi Gras. When Ash Wednesday arrives, I am ready for the rest from feast days and Ordinary Time. I am ready for the challenge of self sacrifice and the invitation to draw myself ever closer to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

This year I had planned to again give up Facebook and sleeping in and to attend daily Mass. This was my plan. The more I prayed about it and opened myself to listen to God’s plans, the more I felt led to fast from other things.

fasting
I am a woman with an Irish temper. It flashes hot and loud and I am a yeller. I also have picked up quite a potty mouth since moving to Dallas. The traffic here is horrible and all too often I say words which I ought not to say. This year for Lent, I am fasting from volume and cursing. In changing my tone I will also change my content and praise my children at least 5 times a day each without attaching a criticism to them. Thinking of the sacrifice that my Savior made for each of them shames me when I think of how I sometimes sound when I talk to my children. My family deserves a mother and wife who is kind and in control of herself. I need to speak to them in the calm affectionate tones I want them to remember, the voice of the mother God wants me to be to them.

prayer
I have gotten very lazy in my prayer life and do not speak to God as often as I should. I will still give up my lazy mornings. Instead of Mass, I will pray a rosary every morning, dedicated each morning to a different one of my children. There are so many of them that it is all too easy to think of them as a unit rather than as individuals, so I will pray for them one by one. I have asked each of them to make a list of intentions for me and I will spend Lent praying for the things which are important to them rather than those which are important to me.

almsgiving
We live in a home which is filled to the rafters with mounds of stuff. Not things which are important to us in anyway, just things which we own. We have a surplus where others have great need. Because of this, I will be taking a grocery bag of donations to the local charity thrift store every day. I don’t worry that we will have enough to give away, but that we will still have a surplus when Easter arrives.

I intend to spend the next 40 days striving to be the woman I am called to be. This family is a gift He has given to me. It’s time that I treated them that way.

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