Well, here we are at the end of the first week of Lent. For some of us, we may already be finding our Lenten resolves waning. Six weeks may begin to seem like forever. But unlike some of our New Year's resolutions, which are sometimes made with little hope of sticking to them for a whole year, keeping these resolutions truly matters. They have an impact on our soul, and help us to grow in detachment and love.
It is important that we persevere! Lent is the Catholic Church's penitential season. Penance is not something we typically enjoy. It is not always easy; in fact, it is often very hard. But isn't that the point? To stretch ourselves and purify our hearts of inordinate desires and attachments? Because of our fallen human nature, we offend God in countless ways every day. Although we are all called to do penance regularly, Lent gives us the opportunity to truly enter into the Passion of Christ. After the Fall in the Garden of Eden sin entered the world and the gates of Heaven were closed. But God had a plan to reconcile us to Himself and to once again open the gates of Heaven to us. And how did God plan to do that? Through the Cross. Through immense suffering, humiliation, pain and death. He could have saved us another way but He didn't. The Cross was Plan A. It wasn't Plan B in case Jesus somehow failed (impossible), it was Plan A - the plan from the beginning.
Why was the Cross Plan A for salvation? Why would God choose to suffer and die so cruelly? There are a lot of reasons and ways to answer that, but one of the reasons that God chose to do it this way is so that we would not have a God who is distant and untouchable. We brought sin, pain and suffering upon ourselves in the Garden of Eden (see the Book of Genesis for the whole story) but God would not let us stay condemned. He descended into our misery and weakness, completely took it on, and conquered it so that our suffering would not be meaningless. Jesus opened the gates of Heaven so that those who repent of their sins and strive to live uprightly can attain eternal glory with Him there.
During the Season of Lent, we remember what Jesus did for us by prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Sometimes our giving - our fasting, our prayers - hurts. But it is precisely these struggles that we must unite to Christ's suffering in His Passion. Jesus knows what it is to suffer. He knows what it is to die. We have a God who is close to us in our misery, and we have the opportunity to offer our sufferings back to Him as a way of showing Him that we understand why He sent His Son. We tell God that although there is no way we could ever repay Him, we do our best to offer penances for our selfishness out of gratitude for the debt we could not pay that was fulfilled on the Cross. We tell God that we are willing to suffer even a little in order to enjoy eternal bliss. We unite our small sufferings and sacrifices to Christ's sacrifice on the Cross as one united offering.
For each of the mysteries of the Rosary, there is a corresponding fruit of that mystery that we can meditate on. The fruit of the fifth Sorrowful Mystery - the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus - is perseverance. Jesus was afraid, just as we all are, at the thought of the pain that was to come. None of us have ever felt the fear and anguish that was in Him that Holy Thursday night, but we have experienced moments where we, too, would wish to forgo some suffering or sacrifice. It was the Father's will that He continue on this path, however, and He persevered until the very end, embracing His Cross and asking forgiveness for His crucifiers. The fruit of His perseverance was Calvary; it was our salvation. We do not know what the fruit of our perseverance will be but we can be sure that when we persevere in our Lenten mortifications, we will have acheived greater discipline in our lives and our Easter will be that much more glorious! It's like spiritual weightlifting! When we are able to mortify ourselves, we become stronger and more detached from whatever is holding us back from truly seeking God with our whole heart, our whole mind and our whole strength.
Let us continue to stay strong in our resolutions this Lent, trusting that our perseverance will not be wasted! Let us "...rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurane produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5: 3-5).
Written by Catherine
