Food for Thought

There's a lot about the season of Lent that mirrors nature, at least for those of us who live in places where we experience four distinct seasons.

Mar 18, 2016

There's a lot about the season of Lent that mirrors nature, at least for those of us who live in places where we experience four distinct seasons.

As Jesus wandered in the desert, some of us, too, live the season of Lent in what physically resembles a desert: a sea of brown trees without leaves, dry and barren land, and darkness that engulfs the day. We anticipate Easter and its message with the same longing of seeing that first daffodil push its way through the earth after a long and cold winter.

Nature can teach us a lot about Lent, about patience, anticipation, about listening and observing and letting the greater power of God take over. We can't control the seasons, just as we can't control life. We just have to let it happen.

In a March 2015 America magazine article on Lent, Jesuit Father Francis X. Clooney wrote about this type of detachment, which he called a "path of serene action, for the sake of the world, and leading directly to God."

We can be like Jesus, he says, as he approaches Jerusalem, quiet and letting God take over.

"The greatest and tumultuous things in our lives can be, if we understand this, as simple as the rising and setting of the sun; we just need to be there, we don't have to do anything," Father Clooney writes.