“You do WHAT every year?”
“Why would God want you to torture yourself?”
“Doesn’t God want you to have fun?”
How do you explain Lent to someone who’s not Catholic?
From the outside, it seems like Catholics are anti-fun because it’s holy to give up things you love.
I admit, It can be difficult to understand the idea of sacrifice.
But there is something similar to sacrificing for Lent that most people can understand…sacrificing for sports.
What is Lent?
Lent is a time of spiritual preparation.
Jesus went into the desert for 40 days to fast, pray, and prepare for his mission, which ended in his passion, death, and resurrection. Every year, the Church imitates Jesus by symbolically going into the desert for 40 days as well.
We fast, pray, and deny ourselves to spiritually prepare for celebrating the resurrection at Easter.
Fasting and giving stuff up during Lent is called asceticism. It comes from the Greek word áskēsis, which means training or exercise.
Originally in ancient Greece, it didn’t have anything to do with religion. Askēsis was the training you did for athletic competition. When you’re trying to get in shape, you don’t eat junk food, and you don’t sit around on the couch. You go on a strict diet and do intense exercise.
Lent is like spiritual training camp
Lent is like an intensive training camp for the spiritual life.
Every summer, football teams go to training camp. They work out extra hard to get in shape, they perfect core skills, and they eat a special way to cut fat and grow muscle.
During Lent, Catholics take on spiritual exercises, like giving things up, fasting, prayer, and more frequent worship. These are like the exercise, diet, and core skills of a training camp. We don’t deny ourselves because we hate the world or enjoy pain. Rather, we train ourselves to ready to receive more of God and his love.
Does sacrificing the things you love would make God happy?
Not the sacrifice…but what the sacrifice can bring–a pure heart capable of loving him completely. Lent is about emptying your heart of those things that distract you from loving God in order to be filled up with more of him. We give up something good for something infinitely better. It’s a fair trade.
The key to Lent is self-mastery
To be completely happy and fulfilled, we need to follow God’s plan for our lives. When we stray from that plan, things go wrong. Sin is a turning away from God because we choose our ways over his ways.
The temptation reject God, or even be indifferent to him can be strong. Self-mastery is an important concept in the spiritual life. The passions, emotions, and bodily desires can sometimes rule over you and control you. If food, sex, comfort, anger, or the quest for wealth and possessions control your life, you’re not truly free.
But if you have the control to bend those things to your will, then you call the shots. You’re truly free to direct your life where you want it to go and follow God totally.
Giving up small things during Lent trains you to follow God’s will. Then, when God calls you to give up larger things to follow him, you’ll be ready.
Lent takeaway
No, God doesn’t like it when we’re in pain. He likes it when we’re holy and when we can love selflessly.
But love doesn’t come without sacrifice, and sacrifice doesn’t come easily without training.
Lent is about training yourself to let go of things you love a little so that you can love greater. It’s not about rejecting life but fully living it!
Lenten disciplines lead to more fulfilled human action. It’s only in possessing yourself that can you give yourself away in love. And by giving yourself in love, you’ll truly find yourself.
P.S.
Do you have a story about a Lent where you felt really emptied of external distractions and more filled up with God? How did it feel? Leave a comment and tell me about it.
Do you have a non-Catholic friend that’s been wondering about Lent? Send them this post and let me know what they thought.
Photo Credit: Edgar Barany via Compfight cc
