Let’s practice choosing better this Lent
Hello,
It’s Pablo from Catholic Mass Times.
Wow— more than half of the Lent season has already passed. Time Flies! How are your Lenten resolutions coming along? If you’re like me and many others, you might feel you could have done them more perfectly. Fortunately, perfection isn’t the goal, nor is adhering to a strict diet.
Our mother Church has recommended the three pillars of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—for two thousand years because they work! The goal is to fight the good fight during these 40 days so that we enter Holy Week in a stronger spiritual state and emerge spiritually renewed after Easter. That’s why we should set more challenging Lenten resolutions each year. It isn’t simply about doing or abstaining during something these 40 days and then going back to our previous condition; it’s about identifying, during this Lenten season, one (or a couple) of our habits or affections that pull our souls away from God and choosing to replace them with practices that will help us in our path towards heaven!
EVERY DAY, God grants us a new opportunity to decide whether we want to CHOOSE HEAVEN OR NOT. Not a boring heaven like those cartoons showing people standing on clouds in eternal white, playing harps—but the real heaven Jesus promised us:the exhilaration of seeing God Face to Facethe overwhelming joy of being completely immersed in the boundlessness of His Love, singing with (or listening, if you sing as badly as I do) the angelic choruses, delighting in the company of Our Lady and all the saints,marveling as we gradually comprehend the infinite beauty of God’s perfect designs at every level… an eternity of awesomeness and love! We will surely also marvel at how He balances His infinite power with an absolute respect for each person’s freedom of choice. Crazy, isn’t it? How can He honor our freedom so much? As for me, I CHOOSE HEAVEN every morning and strive for the path that leads to it. I’m sure you have chosen this path as well!
In that light, let’s think today how can we better fight this Lent:
- Prayer: We all have the same 1440 minutes each day, and how we use them reveals what truly reigns in our hearts. Let’s invest our time wisely, devoting more daily minutes to converse with the Lord! Let’s pray more fervently these days, for example, asking God to help us see any habit, relationship, or attachment that isn’t drawing us toward heaven and that we haven’t yet resolved to root out. What are we waiting for? It’s time to stop that! Let’s not keep Our Loving Father waiting any longer! We could also decide to wake up 30 minutes earlier every day and devote that time to nurturing our relationship with God—whether by attending Mass (or coming to Mass some minutes earlier if you are already attending the 7 days of the week), praying the rosary, engaging in spiritual reading, or participating in adoration more frequently. The grace we gain from this will powerfully pull us forward on our path to heaven!
- Fasting: We should, of course, fast by eating much less food, especially the food we like, offering that sacrifice to accompany Jesus in his sacrifice. We can also fast by abstaining from other things we enjoy doing that are not propelling us toward heaven! How about taking a break from TV and social media, which constantly feeds our proclivity to gossip and feelings of lust and envy? It will significantly quiet the noise in our minds! I deleted all social media apps from my phone on Ash Wednesday, and I’m loving it?
- Almsgiving: the Church invites us to spend some money on others instead of using it only for ourselves and our family. It is not only for wealthy people but all of us, even poor widows. It’s about giving our money to show love and caring for the well-being of others! How about spending less money and time on our selfish desires (whether material wants like that new phone, shoes, car, financial security, status symbols, recognition, our physical appearance, travel plans, etc. (our hearts are never satisfied!) instead considering how we can use some money to benefit others? We may enable someone to improve their life conditions or cover the cost of an activity that will put them back on their path toward heaven, like a retreat, a camp, or a good book,…
If we set out to fight to incorporate at least one of these good habits or eliminate from our lives at least one of the situations, relationships, or customs that do not pull us upward in the spiritual life, this Lent will have strengthened us.
We still have a few weeks left. Let’s make good use of them!
Our team at Catholic Mass Times is helping hundreds of thousands of Catholics along their 40-day Lenten journey, walking with Jesus. You know the benefits of using this app, which is made possible by the help of many people who contribute by sending data, and through your prayers and alms. Catholic Mass Times provides services in all countries of the world. In fact, in MOST COUNTRIES, our app is the only way to find the current Mass times, as parishes don’t have updated websites or websites at all!
I invite you to support our work financially during this Lenten season by including Catholic Mass Times in your donations/alms. Your contribution helps us pay the expenses needed to update the Lent schedules of thousands of parishes worldwide, keep the app completely free and without ads, develop new functionality, publish more churches, reach more Catholics, and make the sacraments more accessible to everyone.
