by Laurie Flaherty
I know what you must be thinking. Why would someone look forward to Lent? Lent, the forty days that precede the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension to Heaven on Easter, is supposed to be a time of personal sacrifice. Jesus went to the desert to pray and fast for forty days, so aren’t we supposed to “suffer” as he did? The answer is “yes” and “no.” Yes, we should use this time to sacrifice not because we are made to suffer, but because giving something up or trying to mindfully practice kindness and love on a daily basis helps us to feel closer to God and to deepen our spiritual relationship with Him.
For me, Lent is a time to self-reflect and to re-examine my relationship with God, and that is why I look forward to it. It helps me to grow spiritually and as a human being. It helps me to look inward and ask the question, “How can I be a better person and what things can I do to spread the love and light of Jesus?” It begs the question of how we as human beings can live more as an image of God. This is something we talk a lot about at All Saints Catholic Academy and Lent helps me to really ask myself that question and try to honestly answer it.
As we look ahead to Lent and to what we might want to do or give up, there are two important things to remember about a Lenten intention or sacrifice: keep it reasonable and keep it realistic! I learned this lesson four years ago when I tried to give up my morning cup of coffee for Lent. I figured that would be the “ultimate” sacrifice for me and would help me to feel closer to God. I can tell you that all it did was make me miserable and it was so hard that I ended up giving up about two weeks into it. I felt like I had let God and myself down. But what I realize now is that in trying to give up something like my morning coffee, I was starting each day feeling cranky and tired. This was not a positive way for me to start my day or to help me feel closer to God. So the next year as I thought about other things that I could do for Lent, it occurred to me that giving up social media would be a reasonable and realistic sacrifice that might also help to strengthen my relationship with God. I’m not on social media a lot but I am on it enough to miss it if it is gone. Wow was I “spot on” with this one. Disconnecting from the world of social media left me more time to be present with myself, my family and with God. I gained so much from this experience that I have been giving up social media every year since. And in place of the social media, I pray. I leave the Facebook and Instagram icons on my phone so that every time I feel the urge to check my social media accounts, I pray instead. I pray a lot during Lent! I also miss a lot of birthdays and other events but no one seems to mind. I never announce that I am going “off-line” but some people do notice that I am gone. And I have to admit that when the forty days is up, it is fun to see what I have “missed.” Although what I have learned over the past few years is that I really don’t miss much and what I gain is a renewed and deeper sense of my faith.
And one very cool thing to note this year is that Lent starts on Valentine’s Day and it also starts right in the middle of National Random Acts of Kindness Week so even if you aren’t Catholic, I encourage you to use this time to set an intention. Perhaps it is to say or do one nice thing each day for another person, to smile more, to not gossip, to volunteer somewhere for a day. Whatever it is, think of this time as an opportunity to grow as a person in a positive way. Happy Lent everyone!
