Lent always seems to come upon us before we're ready, like an in-law who shows up early for a visit.
But unlike an out-of-town relative, Lent itself is the preparation for the Ultimate Guest: the resurrected Jesus Christ. We've got forty days to pull ourselves together and make a sincere effort to be ready to greet Him at His Easter triumph. It's a daunting deadline.
Some of us will start out strong and fade in the stretch. Others will get a late start but finish with fervor. Yet most of us Catholics will spend our Lenten weeks wondering what in the world we should be doing to draw closer to God, and we'll struggle to find answers.
As we grow in the faith, which hopefully is what we are striving to do, we accumulate a check list of Lenten tips and strategies: giving up treats, taking on acts of charity, and pledging more prayer time, including most notably the Stations of the Cross. These and other traditional forms of piety are excellent practices and produce wonderful spiritual fruit.
However, our Lenten journey — indeed our life's journey — is meant to bring us to intimacy with Christ, if not face-to-face right now, then certainly heart-to-heart. In order to remove the barriers of sin that prevent intimacy, we're called to dig deeper into what stands between Christ and ourselves. Ironically, for many Christians, this deep digging starts with a layer of dust at the top.
"Remember, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."
These profound words spoken on Ash Wednesday set the stage for our personal investigation into our own failings. We are marked with the sign of our sin. In many ways dust is a wonderful metaphor for our failings.
Most of us usually consider ourselves decent people, with no major moral failings. Few of us will struggle, in our lifetimes, with such mortal sins as murder or robbery. All of us struggle, however, with the dust of everyday sin: resentment, ingratitude, muttering and complaining, uncharitable speech and acts, pettiness, rudeness and self-importance, to name a few. These are the sins of "good people" which accumulate daily, harm our relationships with those we love, and stifle the life of our spirit, preventing what we crave: intimacy with Christ. The weight of these dusty sins can be enormous, even soul-killing.
"We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment," writes C.S. Lewis in a preface to The Screwtape Letters, an excellent vehicle, by the way, for self-examination.
A collection of fictitious letters from a high ranking devil to his neophyte devil nephew, The Screwtape Letters gives ample credit to the dust of everyday sin as an effective tool in hell's arsenal to trap well-meaning Christians.
"Build up…in that household a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks," the devil advises his nephew about the souls he is tempting. "Work on the very things that are almost unendurably irritating to (each) other…Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human doing and saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offense is taken."
Now, I don't know about your household, but these words strike too close for comfort in mine. Like a house in need of cleaning, the dust of everyday sin settles on our lives, blurring our vision of proper relationships and muffling the consoling and counseling words of the Holy Spirit. Soon, there is a growing layer of dust on everything around us and on ourselves.
During Lent, we can refuse to eat candy, work at a soup kitchen and attend daily Mass, but if we're not addressing the everyday challenges of resentment, hurt pride, self-importance and lack of forgiveness, we will not advance toward the heart of our Creator.
In the liturgical wisdom of the Church, we were presented with the moving Gospel of the Beatitudes on the final Sunday before Lent began. The Beatitudes are practical yet lofty measurements of the sins that can separate us from Christ. "Blessed are the poor in spirit…those who mourn…the meek…those who hunger for righteousness…the merciful…the pure in heart…the peacemakers…those who are persecuted for righteousness sake."
May God forgive me, where am I in that list? I can't find myself in any of these aspirations. It's no wonder I stand so far away from my Lord despite my best intentions.
We've got 40 days to get our houses in order, to clean the dust off our spiritual lives and remove some of the barriers that keep us from Christ. As the Holy Spirit sustained and led Jesus from the desert, so He strengthens and leads us to the beginning of an Easter life.
