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March 9, 2019During my novitiate, as I was talking with a young woman about Lent, she said plainly: “I don’t like Lent, the hymns are so sad, we don’t sing ‘Alleluia!’ or the Gloria, and it’s forty days long.” She definitely has a point, during the first week I often catch myself beginning to sing ‘Alleluia!’ and noticing that it is especially a time of penance. It is out of the ordinary both communally and personally. When we gather for prayer we see these differences that she pointed out: a different set of hymns that help us focus on our own conversion, and we omit the Gloria and often sing a ‘Glory and Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ’ for the Gospel Acclamation as we journey for forty days in preparation for the Kingdom that is to come. In our personal lives, the journey takes different forms: enriching one’s prayer life with new forms of prayer, donating our time and treasure to those in need, and abstaining from certain foods or things that we delight in.
This abstinence is what today’s readings point out. Isaiah is calling us to observe the Lord’s holy day through self-denial: “If you honor it by not following your ways… then you shall delight in the Lord.” Let us take advantage of this season of Lent to recognize that every day that we wake up is possible because of our Lord. In recognizing this, we are called to give honor to God every single day. We abstain by not following our own ways of delight, then God responds with an abundance of the true delight. Like the tax collector, we receive a call from Jesus to follow Him, so we should also “leave everything behind,” every excess that does not give honor to God. This is a daily conversion, we’re at the beginning of this 40-day journey. Each of us prepares personally and we come together to be enriched by each other’s witness in prayer. Then we return to our daily lives as we continue working on our own repentance and conversion, leaving behind our old ways and walking towards Christ who offers us the true delight.
