Lenten Springtime

As the editor of our local newspaper for more than forty years, my dad used to write an editorial each spring imploring people of the community to refrain from using mowers and other noisy power equipment on Sundays.  It never made a difference as far as I could tell, but that never deterred him from writing it.  Likewise, with some apparent futility I go to some lengths each year to try to point out that Lent is not and was never intended to be a time of gloomy deprivation.  In fact, the word “lent” actually comes from a word meaning “springtime,” as in new life.

Like Advent is a holy time of preparation for Christmas, Lent is not a season for its own sake, but is about preparing ourselves, heart, mind, strength and soul, for the new life we share in the greatest celebration the Church offers us in the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.  As such, Lent is not about giving up what is good or things we’ve been giving up since childhood, but giving up what is harmful and gets in the way of what we are preparing to celebrate: resentment, cynicism, being self-absorbed…  Lent is a time of holy preparation for Easter - coming through the shameful and agonizing death of the cross to the irrepressible hope for new and eternal life that the cross makes possible.  So take this Lenten time, not as a distasteful period of deprivation to slog through until the forty days are o’re, but as time for being better prepared to share in the Easter celebration of new life promised in our Lord’s resurrection.
 
-Marc