Life Lines

You Can’t Fail Lent

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Lent is one of those seasons that always begins with the best of intentions and rapidly goes downhill, at least that’s how it usually plays out for me. I plan to pray more, eat less and find creative ways to make my favorite time in the Church year more meaningful. Unfortunately, the ashes hardly have time to settle into the wrinkles on my forehead before I’m feeling like I’ve already failed.

But Lent is a journey, not a test. The goal is not a perfect score at the end of 40 days. In fact, let’s throw out the word “goal” and focus instead on practice—spiritual practice. Here are five tips for jumpstarting a sputtering Lenten plan.

 

  Don’t set yourself up for a fall. Last year in my spiritual journal, I wrote the following plan: “Prayer at breakfast; spiritual reading at lunch; no eating between meals; no sweets; check Facebook only twice each day and not at all after dinner; write at least one personal letter to a friend each week.” If I was having trouble finding even 10 minutes a day for prayer before Lent, there was really no chance I was going to do even half of this. And so, within about 48 hours, I had “failed,” thereby giving myself permission to throw my hands up and quit. Try to stretch beyond what you normally do, but don’t aim for something so spiritually pie-in-the-sky that there’s no way to see it through. 

 

2   If you’re not getting a lot out of Lent, look at what you’re putting in. Right from the start of Lent I expect to see tangible progress—and fast. But I don’t always want to put in the hard work required. We need to approach spiritual practice the way I used to tell my son to approach piano practice: You don’t get to be an expert by simply sitting close to the lesson books. You have to work at it a little every day. If we’re not spending regular quiet time with God in prayer, we’re going to have a hard time getting out of the starting gate.

 

3   If you slip up, start over or shift gears. One Lent a few years ago all of my grand plans were waylaid by sick children and my own bout with illness. We had one virus after another keeping us down—both physically and spiritually. I began to realize that perhaps my “sacrifice” for the season was to let go of my plans, and accept what was right in front of me—my children in need of a mom to comfort them. My Lenten plans were far more selfish than my Lenten reality. I wanted to lock myself away in silence. Instead I had to give up my quiet time and make time for someone else. Don’t see backsliding as failure but as an opportunity to figure out what your practice should really be about.

 

4   Don’t use Lent as a way to achieve other goals. When our Lent goes off course it’s because we want transformation on our own terms. We give up sweets as a Lenten sacrifice but secretly hope we’ll lose a few pounds before Easter arrives. We give up meat on Fridays, but end up paying far more for flounder than we ever would have spent on chicken, defeating the purpose of “sacrifice.” We vow to pray more, but get annoyed when family responsibilities force us to miss daily Mass or our meditation time. Where is the still small voice in all of that?

 

5   When all else fails, just be kinder today than you were yesterday. Can we choose to love others even when it would be easier, and perhaps even justified, to be angry? Can we look for our Lenten path in the worn tread of the carpet leading to the laundry room, in the long line of cars at the toll plaza? Can we find transformation not on some cloud-lined spiral staircase leading to the sky but on the unswept kitchen floor surrounded by the people we love, who are often also the people who drive us crazy? If we can do that, even if we haven’t managed to follow through on any of our other plans, then we’ll pass Lent with flying colors.

  


Mary DeTurris Poust is a retreat leader, public speaker and author of six books on Catholic spirituality. Visit her at at: www.notstrictlyspiritual.com.