Lent is a most practical season. It’s meant to take us somewhere (Easter), do something along the way (grow spiritually), and it gives us practical tools to accomplish its goals (prayer, fasting and almsgiving). Nowadays it’s not even a cliché to say “Lent is a journey”; it’s become a saccharine and irritating phrase. Bearing all that in mind, let me say Lent is—uh—a trip. When you go on a trip, you mean to go somewhere other than the palace you are at. You may have a variety of reasons for going (a vacation, to see someone, to do some business, to track down a rare book), but before you leave, you have a pretty good idea where you’re going and why you’re going there.
When you make a trip, you get your maps and tickets together, your reservations and appointments entered into whatever the latest electronic thingamajig is, and make sure you have enough money to do all the things you want to do. You plan your trip.
If Lent is a trip, we need to do the same thing. We plan our Lent.
As you know, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. This year, that’s March 9, just about two weeks from now. Lent lasts (counting Holy Week) six weeks and three days. The old hymn says “Forty Days and Forty Nights,” but the Sundays aren’t added into that total.
Forty days is interesting. The forty days of Lent are patterned after the forty days our Lord spent in the wilderness, just after His Baptism. He planned His time in the wilderness. He didn’t simply wander off, or go for a walk and found Himself in the Judean desert. He went there on purpose. He patterned His forty days after the Forty Years the Jews under Moses wandered through the desert, seeing where God would lead them, after the forty days and forty nights Moses spent with God on Mount Sinai before receiving the Law and the forty days and forty nights the Prophet Elijah spent in the desert of Horeb, after which God revealed Himself to Elijah “in the still, small Voice.” Jesus went to the desert for forty days according to His plan, a plan fixed by tradition.
Forty is a rich, Biblical number. Interestingly though, it also forms a potent part of our psyches. A few decades back, it became a truism of advertising that psychological tests showed that it took, on average, forty unconscious exposures to a product before a person actually thinks about it. Other studies have shown that it takes forty regular repetitions of an act for it to become a habit.
I’m fairly certain the Fathers of the Church, in centuries past, didn’t plan the length of Lent to coincide with these psychological facts. But they come into play anyway. Lent is a time to focus on habits good and bad.
Lent is meant to be a trip, but at some point this wheezy old truism wears out, and here’s where: it’s a trip we’re not meant to return from. We meant to live closer to God during Lent, but come the Feast of the Resurrection, we’re not meant to retrace our steps. We’re not to go back to the same person we were before. If we’ve grown in grace, we don’t want to shrink back, but consolidate our spiritual gains.
What do you want out of Lent?
How do you want to be different come Easter Day than you are today?
What is the most powerful sin in your life? Do you have the courage to face it? If so, Lent is a good way and a good time to do it.
The Church has given you the perfect tools for you to reach your Lenten goal—prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Because each of is a bit different though, we need to know how to use these tools to address our own individual temptations and sins.
More about that next week. For this week, ponder some of the above questions. Plan your Lenten trip; it needn’t be sour and dismal, it can be invigorating and fun, but most of all, let it be a trip worth taking.
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