The feeling that I’m failing at Lent

A Reflection for Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Find today’s readings here.

I’m really bad at this whole Lent thing. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s one of my favorite liturgical seasons in the church year (weird, I know). I’ve always loved the additional encouraging opportunities for prayer: mid-week chances for the sacrament of reconciliation, Friday Stations of the Cross devotions, an additional Mass during the week among other things. During my undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame, I had a solid group of friends in my dorm and I remember fondly how we would always decide on a group penitential practice together, such as giving up drinking for Lent or not watching TV by yourself to encourage gathering as a community. 

No matter how prepared I was though, as Ash Wednesday rolled around, I’d find myself stressed that somehow, someway, I wasn’t “doing enough.” I felt like I needed to go to that extra Mass or pray that additional rosary. It wasn’t until later, during my graduate studies, that an alternative way of approaching Lent was given to me, echoed here in our first reading for today. 

It can be easy, at least for me, for Lent as a season of preparation to become oversaturated with devotions and extra occasions for fasting. If I’m not careful, these really good and beautiful things become an extremely high standard that I begin to hold myself to, a standard that is not held by God. And when I would inevitably find myself not able to meet these rigorous standards of perfection, I would get angry or loathsome with myself, even during this first week of Lent. 

This first reading, then, seems very intentionally placed on this Saturday following Ash Wednesday. Here, God reminds us through the prophet Isaiah that walking with God in Lent doesn’t necessarily mean adding on a plethora of extra things for this season. Rather, it means removing things from our daily living—by noticing the injustices and acts of hatred that happen around us—and to do our best, as stewards of justice, eradicate them. 

This includes acts of “oppression,” seen in moments like the removal of the Pride Flag at the Stonewall monument in New York City; “false accusations and malicious speech,” such as in the wrongful detainment of many of our neighbors by ICE; and giving food to the hungry and comforting the afflicted among us. It is by removing these acts of injustice and oppression in our midst, not just adding a multitude of prayer practices, that God makes God’s self known as a guide, as a great provider and a light for us in the darkness. 

In this season of Lent, let us follow God’s call to be stewards of God’s justice. Whatever our Lenten practices and disciplines may be, may they help us to be better witnesses to God’s love in this world and not merely standards of perfection to which we will never achieve this side of heaven. By doing so, we might just be able to begin to answer Jesus’ call given to Levi—and also to us—in our Gospel today: “Follow me.”

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