Feria Quarta Cinerum

LESSON: Lent is not a contest

There are two words which repeat themselves over and over again in today’s liturgy, “mercy” and “repentance”.

In today’s Church, the season of Lent is often presented in one of two ways. It’s often seen as either sacrifice or challenge, and both of these views can be problematic.

In the “sacrifice” view, which is common among Catholics who are less committed to their faith that perhaps they should be, Lent is seen as the time that we “give up” our favourite things. This view is so pervasive, that you often see the reaction against it in the form of “don’t give something up, take something up”. It’s a reaction against sacrifice for sacrifice sake. If all we’re doing is giving things up because that’s what we’re supposed to do, because that’s what we’ve always done, then we’ve missed the point of Lent entirely.

On the other side of the coin, Lent today is often presented, or should I say “marketed” as a challenge to be overcome. We see this from programs like Exodus 90, and from a lot of the professional Catholic apologists. Now in some ways this is an attempt to get young people, especially young men, to make a greater investment in the Lenten season, and consequently a greater investment in their faith, because they respond to challenges. However, Lent is not an endurance contest! That’s not to say that Lent can’t be challenging, it should be, but it is not a challenge to be overcome.

Today’s liturgy gives us the proper tone for this season, and it is found in those two words which are repeated multiple times in the prayers of today’s Mass, “mercy” and “repentance”. The penance that we are beginning today is, as the Prophet Joel says in today’s Lesson, a response to the great mercy that we have received from God.

ILLUSTRATION: St. Mary of Egypt & Holy Repentance

St. Mary of Egypt, the patron saint of penitents, is an excellent example of repentance in response to mercy.

In her youth, Mary was unabashedly impenitent, living a dissolute and promiscuous life for seventeen years in Alexandria.

Upon hearing of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from her home in Alexandria for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, she resolved to accompany the pilgrims, not as a pilgrim herself, but rather in order to tempt young pilgrims to sin. Mary was actually quite successful, and paid for her passage to Jerusalem by prostitution, and we are told that she “frequently forced those miserable youths even against their own will [into every] mentionable or unmentionable depravity”.

Nevertheless, despite her own impure intentions, in Jerusalem she experienced the mercy of God, it could be said that while she was hunting young men to satisfy her sinful desires, God was hunting her. Mary, in the midst of her impenitence, marched right up to the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, intending to go in among the crowd of pilgrims.

As she reached the door, of the church, she suddenly felt herself repelled by some supernatural force. She tried in vain four times to enter the church, but each time she was pushed out. She immediately realized that God was excluding her from this holy place, and she went to a corner of the churchyard and began weeping over her sins.

When she happened to look up she saw a statue of the Blessed Mother, and with deep faith and humility prayed to Our Lady for help and permission to enter the church, promising that if her request was granted, she would renounce her sinful ways and follow wherever Our Lady might lead her.

She approached the door again and entered without difficulty. She adored the Holy Cross, kissed the sacred ground, and returned to the statue. While praying she was told that if she crossed the Jordan, she would find rest. That same evening Mary reached the Jordan, received Holy Communion in the Church of St. John the Baptist, crossed the river and entered the desert. She spent the next forty-seven years in the desert doing penance for her sins.

Mary’s penance, like our Lenten penance, was not done simply for the sake of doing penance, nor was it a challenge she put to herself, no it was done as a response to the immense love and mercy she received from God.

APPLICATION: Keeping mercy before our eyes

If we want to have the right motivations this Lent, if we want to live out our penance in a true spirit of repentance, then as we have seen, we need to keep God’s mercy constantly before our eyes. We cannot just have an abstract idea of God’s mercy though, like St. Mary, we need a firsthand experience of it, if we want to experience true repentance.

This is why saints and spiritual writers constantly recommend the practice of a daily examen. When we come to the end of each day, we need to take a few moments, guided by the Holy Spirit, to look back upon the day. We are not necessarily trying to find material to take to our next Confession, though if we uncover any serious sins we certainly should make a point of getting to Confession as soon as possible. No, we are rather noting our faults and failings in the light of God’s mercy.

It can be very helpful to have the Cross before our eyes when we make our daily examen, as a reminder to ourselves what our purpose is. We are remembering, that even though we are sinners, and that each and every day we will fall, we will fail in some way, nevertheless, God in His great mercy offers us His love and forgiveness.

Pope St. John Paul, in his encyclical on mercy, Dives in misericordia, says this: “Believing in the crucified Son means 'seeing the Father,' means believing that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity, or the world are involved. Believing in this love means believing in mercy. For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love’s second name and, at the same time, the specific manner in which love is revealed”.

When Our Lord, once again comes to us in Holy Communion this day, let us ask Him for the grace to keep His Mercy ever before our eyes this Lent, so that our penance will not just be done out of habit, or as some sort of personal challenge, but rather as authentic repentance in the light of God’s Mercy.