Ash Wednesday as a day of fast and abstinence allows those of us who have led privileged lives to experience something unfamiliar-- hunger. For many people, this is an every day occurrence. For us it is jarringly unfamiliar and even a little distressing. Perhaps, because of our weakness, we are thus given a special opportunity to offer something to the Lord.
But Lent is much deeper than hunger. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 540:
Jesus' temptation reveals the way in which the Son of God is Messiah, contrary to the way Satan proposes to him and the way men wish to attribute to him. This is why Christ vanquished the Tempter for us: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning." (Heb 4:15) By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.Surely, Jesus experienced temptation to a degree unlike anything we can imagine.
Lent is a time of great grace. May we not miss the opportunities we are offered to receive more of what the Lord longs to give us. From CCC 1438:
The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent, and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church's penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).And from In Conversation with God, the meditation for Ash Wednesday: "God wants to detach ourselves from the things of the earth and return to him. He wants us to abandon sin, which makes us grow old and die, and for us to return to the fount of life and joy." Jesus Christ himself is the most sublime grace of the whole of Lent. (From an Ash Wednesday homily 2/28/1979 Pope Saint John Paul, II)
May each of us experience a holy Lent.
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