Lenten lessons to help us throughout life

Mar 27, 2014

By Father David O'Rourke
The Lenten Gospels take us through a bleak and dry landscape. To some, this bleakness signals death. To others, it signals a death of the old self and a transformation to a new self. Yes, the end of yet another Lenten period can seem tiring, but, remember, that as bleak and dry as these weeks can feel, this period– put to good use by praying, learning, ultimately changing – can help us prepare for tough moments to come.

You can think of this time as your own place, a time away from normal daily pressures, where retreat has helped you to think and to find a place to sort things out.

I used to think that way, too. No more. First of all, because I finally had to admit that a pastor can’t get away from his responsibilities. Wherever I go, they go with me, especially in these days of cellphones and the Internet.

These weeks of Lent should help us to see that our location, the landscape around us, the lack of light, perhaps, is not as important as the lens through which we look at what happens to us – wherever, whenever – and our response to difficulties.

The reality, if we think about it, is that the ground always feels like it is changing under our feet. There are stages in life – childhood, young years, middle age, old age – and these stages are real and they are very different. What makes them so different is that they each have their own life agendas. There are things you have to do at one stage that you would never do at another.

But they all have one thing in common – they all are tough. And so they always require a period of reflection, a moment to look back, to find ways to change for the better as we move forward through each stage of life.

Young people have to set things up, get going, make life choices. Then, a dozen years later, as the stress and demands of adult life start crowding in, they have to face personal limits. Spiritually, they may have to face up to the pain they now realize they caused others in the past, as they flexed their youthful wings.

They may have to make amends and that is almost as tough as having to admit to ourselves that there are amends we really ought to make. Then, as the years move us into old age, we begin to realize that in our careers, we have probably gone as far as we’re going to go.

In the United States, we connect success to our careers. They give us personal value and self-esteem. So facing those limits can be very sobering. But sobriety can bring moments of wisdom.

The season of Lent teaches us that as we move through these tough periods, these deserts in life, if you will, we can also clamp down, discard what we don’t need, perfect new habits and transform into a better version of ourselves.

Yes, this landscape can feel bleak while we work to break from what hurts us and we try to change into a new way of being. It teaches us that life, and its stages, is not a battle to be won. Life is not a problem to be solved. It is to be lived in relationship with the lives and circumstances around us.

Life’s years are brief but they are good, to be loved on their own terms, accepted for the privilege they are. The years we are given, the bad and bleak, are not meant to be conquered but appreciated.

What we receive may not be a lot, but at some point, through prayer, patience and reflection, we learn to see the light, we learn to change and to know that it’s probably enough.