To Dust You Shall Return
What the Church is Asking of You this Lent
It is your hearts, not the garments you wear, that must be torn asunder. Come back to the Lord your God; he is ever gracious and merciful, ever patient and rich in pardon; threatens he calamity, even now he is ready to forgive.
Joel 2:13
With Ash Wednesday coming in just a few days, most of us are likely finalizing our Lenten plans. It can be stressful to either make decisions about our fasts or to feel daunted by the fast before it has even begun. Below we’ll share a few principles to take with you into Lent.
May the Lord bless and make perfect all your sacrifices.
How the Church Gives Us Wisdom for Lent
There are really only three things we all ought to be doing for Lent, and they are things that should be done whole-heartedly. There seems to be a frantic panic that surrounds Lenten penances.
We’re probably overcomplicating things.
We need not psycho-analyze ourselves to come up with some sort of prize-worthy plan. The church has always had a simple and salvific plan in place. There is no need to shun these words, prayer-fasting-almsgiving, in search of some great and self-inflicted bootcamp. We must be watchful in this regard.
Our egos are always drawing us away from the Lord.
Now, surely there is great work in examining ourselves and deciding what we might fast or detach from to make room for Christ. So we are best prepared when we look to the Church for guidance. We sinners like to do everything on our own terms, in the way that best suits me. The Church has always known it’s hard to see one’s own self clearly.
True self-knowledge is the hardest and most essential task of human repentance. Perhaps we do best to not begin Lent by presuming we have this self-knowledge, but in asking the Church, how might I come to have this moral clarity? And so she points us to prayer-fasting-almsgiving.
The Adventure of Lent
Of course morality is an inherently personal thing, and each man is moral according to his own body and soul; he does what only he can do — and in a way that only he can do it.
But there is room for the individual to be cracked open so grace may pour in within this threefold schema. And not on our own terms, or within our perfect control.
A final things to consider about entering Lent within the Church’s terms, and not our own, is that the Church is not only being provident for the individual, she is being provident for Christ’s whole body. This means that she will make use of us during Lent to be provident towards the other, and vice versa.
What a wonderfully exciting idea! The Lord is working, especially through Lent, to orient her members towards one another.
Lent is an ultimate adventure into the life of Charity and into Christ’s own heart. And this can only begin when we embrace the prescribed prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Prayer
When we pray, we unite our whole selves to Christ, but we also pray for any others the Lord brings to us. This Lent, we can tirelessly keep our hearts opened to others who need prayers.
Have you ever had someone come to you in desperate need for prayers? We all know the way a friend’s sufferings can bring us an acute awareness of the ability to pray constantly and in all things. Let us be searching this whole Lent for those people we can pray for with an unceasing earnestness.
This sort of prayer sharpens our minds and hearts, to always hold others in our hearts. We cultivate in ourselves a better sense of God’s providence, and that we participate in his providence for others. We start to understand that our lives are not just for ourselves.
How can I maintain this openness?
Consider adding some daily prayer to your life. Maybe a rosary or a divine mercy chaplet. When you resolve to give the Lord this prayer time daily, you may be surprised who He brings before you that needs your prayers. Simply commit to doing the prayer, and he will give you the intentions.
Fasting
This precept of Lent is a funny one today. We almost shy away from it, because of associations we may make with dieting or weight-loss. We think fasting is vain, because we know vain people who do it.
But to be frank, there is a real physical element of fasting the same way there is a real physical manifestation of gluttony. There are tangible signs we experience in our bodies when we are disordered towards food and drink, and there are real and tangible signs, like losing a little weight, when we are rightly ordered towards food and drink.
The problem is when we think everything about our moral powers can be determined by weight and dieting, and this is certainly a problem today. But it must not be one that deters us from true fasting.
The discomforts of fasting are an immense practice of bodily discipline, and we must be willing to endure these sufferings. Let us embrace hunger in a real way this Lent.
You’ve probably heard the Lenten hymn, “The Glory of these Forty Days.” It is an excellent meditation on why we fast.
The glory of these forty days
we celebrate with songs of praise,
for Christ, by whom all things were made,
himself has fasted and has prayed.Alone and fasting Moses saw
the loving God who gave the law.
And to Elijah, fasting, came
the steed and chariots of flame.
First, Christ himself fasted. He who was already perfect in his human and divine nature chose to abstain from worldly goods to teach us what is the way back to the Father. Let us honor the suffering he endured out of love for us by learning from Him. When he went to the desert, He hoped that every single one of us might learn from His example. Let us learn from Him.
Secondly, as we are told of Moses and Elijah, we learn that fasting re-orders our fallen human nature and then opens us up to receive the Divine.
Moses was able to receive God’s law because he prepared his flesh and his soul by fasting. When the Lord presented him with the commandments, his heart was ready. He had practiced relinquishing disordered loves, and he was ready to receive God’s law.
Elijah’s fasting opened him up to a supernatural grace, that carried him above the confines of earthly pleasure. Elijah took his earthly loves and emptied them from his heart, and the Lord filled those empty places with Himself.
When we fast, we hand over the good things we love to the Lord, that He might hand us better things in exchange. Virtues and graces beyond any of our own imaginings.
Almsgiving
Almsgiving is the most underestimated Lenten practice today. St. Thomas Aquinas says that Almsgiving combines both prayer and fasting in one action. There is so much to be said on this essential aspect of the Christian life. But there are two things we need to know above all.
What is almsgiving?
Why must we give alms?
What is Almsgiving?
If you’ve ever looked up the Latin or Greek version of a word in your own language, you probably know there’s some real surprises to be found. Would you have expected the word for alms comes from a Greek word that means to pity or to mercy?
St. Thomas tells us that Almsgiving is : 1. a work of mercy, 2. which makes another’s misery one’s own 3. for God’s sake.
When we give alms, we allow ourselves to enter into the suffering of our neighbors and strangers, and we dare to take their own problems on as our own. We do this out of love for God, who dared to take on our own problem of sin and death out of love for us.
These works can be either spiritual in nature or corporal. If you’ve ever heard of the Spiritual and Corporal works of mercy, those are excellent ways to begin giving alms.
By why must we do this?
St. Thomas says that “As love of our neighbor is a matter of precept, whatever is a necessary condition to the love of our neighbor is a matter of precept also. Now the love of our neighbor requires that not only should we be our neighbor's well-wishers, but also his well-doers.”
Simply, it is a matter of charity, of living a Christian life. Grace is God’s own life in the soul, and if we have grace, we should be living in a way that looks out from one’s own self. We should mirror Christ’s incarnate love, Christ’s love who died for us while we were yet sinners. Who took every single soul upon Himself.
In our littleness, we know that we are not God. But in our humility, we believe that He wants to use us according to his purposes. And using us means using our superfluous goods. The detachment of earthly goods, readily surrendered to another out of compassion, is indeed a sign that we are not storing up earthly treasures for ourselves.
I answer that the word for alms, eleemosyna, is from the Greek word meaning ‘service that is given to the destitute;’ and it is named from eleos, that is, pity or mercy, which makes another’s misery one’s own.
And so just as a man gets rid of as much wretchedness from himself as he can, in the same way the merciful man drives away another’s misery by succoring him: which succor indeed is done by sharing one’s own goods with him; and so the very sharing of one’s own goods with the wretched takes the name ‘almsgiving.’
Now this sharing cannot be meritorious and virtuous except when it is done for God’s sake. And so in the definition given all the things are touched upon that are needed for the perfection of almsgiving as something meritorious.
For the very misery of another, which is the principle of mercy, is referred to in its saying, to the needy; but mercy which is born in us out of the stranger’s misery, is touched on in its saying, out of compassion;
but mercy’s effect in easing the stranger’s misery as though it were our own, is referred to in saying, a work in which something is given: for this is essential to almsgiving itself; but the intention directed to God which gives it a meritorious character, is touched upon in saying, for God’s sake.
Saints and Feasts this Week
February 14 — Ash Wednesday // Sts. Cyril and Methodius // St. Valentine
February 15 — St. Claude de la Colombière
Inspiration for the Week
He that shall meditate day and night on the law of the Lord, shall bring forth his fruit in due season.
Psalm 1:2-3
Sources of Light
Catholic Stickers to Keep the Saints & Faith Close During Lent