Let’s Do Lent

I like Lent. Is that wrong?

It can certainly seem like the Lenten season is designed to make us miserable. We begin with getting marked on our foreheads with ashes while we are told, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That doesn’t sound uplifting. We are then to limit what we eat that day, Ash Wednesday, so that we do not consume meat, having only one regularly sized meal with two very light meals, and no dessert, no snacks. This can make people feel hungry or even hangry. We are to do this again on Good Friday and eat no meat every Friday of Lent.

During the whole of the Lenten season, we are called to meditate upon the suffering of Christ: His 40 days of fasting and prayer in the wilderness where He battled against the temptations of the Evil One, and the culmination of His Passion, from the Agony in the Garden to His Crucifixion. And yes, these meditations can be downers, it’s true. To top it off, we are called to imitate some of Christ’s suffering during Lent, while examining our consciences and repenting of our sinfulness. So we are called to deny our tendency to indulge ourselves, pray more prayers, and give away some of our money and resources to the poor. Lent is when we are to renew and deepen our commitment to do as Jesus says: “Take up your cross, and follow me.”

And I love it. Truly. But not because I like suffering. I definitely do not like suffering, for two very good reasons:  1.) I don’t like suffering, and 2.) I don’t like suffering.

Being human, however, suffer we must.

For me, the messages of Lent have been lived by me in various ways throughout my life:

Ashes to ashes: Living with a debilitating progressive disease, I’ve been aware of my own mortality since I was a child. When I was briefly an atheist, I did not believe that there was anything more to being human than being another animal of stardust who would one day return to dust in the ground.

Self-denial and Christ’s passion: Every human has experienced limitations, but I’ve personally experienced some severe ones — not being able to walk, losing the ability to hold my head up and use my arms — limiting my daily and lifelong choices, along with the exhaustive struggles in my physical weakness, severe discomfort, and even pain.

Mortality and suffering were not invented by Christianity.

But the miseries of life are transformed in the light of Christ.

Change of Perspective, Change of Life

After I could no longer be an atheist (because I came to know that God is real), I came to see in Christ the amazingly absurd and bewilderingly beautiful reality of God in the flesh, suffering in the flesh — God choosing to suffer with His creatures … with me and you. I recognized the intimate love that God has for us human beings, we who are created to be of both stardust and spirit, made in the image and likeness of God. Yes, all mortal flesh passes, dust to dust, but spirit remains forever and divine love never ends.

Now a woman of faith, a faithful member of the Body of Christ, I sometimes lose sight of essential truth and meaning, I sometimes get caught up or lost in the busyness of the world or even the minutia of religion. What I need is to be called back to simplicity, called back to purity of faith and heart. No, that doesn’t mean that I need to become a Protestant. 🙂 What I need to remember is that Christ gives Himself perpetually, continually to me. Have I noticed? Have I been too engaged with the politics of the world or too absorbed by my pleasures and pains that I have ignored the One who loves me beyond imagining? Have I been so self-centered that I have neglected Christ? In terms of daily struggle, have I been “taking it” so much that I have forgotten to give?

These are the questions that I ask myself most pointedly during Lent. Lent is a return to simplicity, a time of decluttering our daily lives so that we may be “poor in spirit” and “pure of heart” and thereby able to recognize the truth of this redeemed world in Christ. This includes:

• The spiritual, eternal reality of our lives.
• The loving sacrifice of Christ.
• The self-giving presence of God here and now, especially tangible in the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
• The suffering of others to whom Christ calls us to minister.

To recognize and embrace this fullness of reality, we do need to put away with childish things, as it were, to put away that tendency to want without thinking or take without giving. Children are innocent when they do this, but we adults are not. May those ashes on our heads remind us that the old self has died. And yet we rise.

Let’s Do Lent

We suffer every day, whether we like it or not, but the suffering is less miserable in the light of Christ Resurrected and Glorified. Why not journey with Him in His sharing of our human struggles, limitations, sufferings, and pain? Why desire Easter only if Easter comes cheaply with no Cross and, therefore, no meaning? We cannot rise unless we die. If we die to self a little bit every day, then we will also rise a little bit every day. We rise above our selfish inclinations, we rise above our petty desires and griefs, we rise above our disappointments, hurt, and setbacks, we rise above this world that can never fully satisfy — by entering into the self-giving love of Christ, the Passion of Christ, the very life of Christ. Simply. Humbly. Day by day.

That doesn’t sound so bad, right?

© 2025 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Lucas Myers on Unsplash