Next week is Holy Week, starting with Palm Sunday leading to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and finally, Easter. I need to ask myself: have I fully entered into the penitential season of Lent? If I were marking myself, I’d give myself a B grade. But it’s not about grades, really. It’s about conversion. Conversion of the heart.
Choosing to be penitential is not easy, nor should it ever be. As I wrote last week, we can deceive ourselves into thinking we’re struggling with one idol only to realize that it was something else we truly struggled with. In my case, it was independence. Relying on myself is not serving God. In the words of the Baltimore Catechism, I was made to know, love, and SERVE God. If I rely on myself, I have not truly known or loved God. I am like Peter, only loving with brotherly love, not loving with true, sacrificial love.
Penance and contrition are essential parts of Church life.
Christ’s call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, “clasping sinners to her bosom, [is] at once holy and always in need of purification, [and] follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.”
CCC 1428
I see this constant cycle of penance and renewal in the liturgical calendar of the Church. While many see Catholics participating in the penitential season of Lent before Easter, they don’t always see that during Ordinary time, Fridays are a day of penance. Advent is also a season of penance. And finally, there are four sets of Ember Days during the year; each set is a Wednesday, followed by the next Friday and Saturday. In the spring, Ember Days fall after Ash Wednesday. The Summer Ember Days fall after Pentecost Sunday. In the fall they come after the Feast of the Holy Cross, and in the winter, after the Feast of St. Lucy.
Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart).
CCC 1431
Once when I was complaining about the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation to a deacon friend of mine, (and clearly showing I had no idea of the true nature of the sacrament), he told me he thought of the sacrament as an opportunity to re-integrate ourselves and make ourselves whole again. When you’re in the midst of an argument with your spouse and want to share the ups and downs of the day with them, but can’t because you’re arguing, remember the despair and desire to be whole with them again. That’s the sacrament of reconciliation.
Circling back to my Lenten journey, I know I am not whole. I carry anger about my middle son’s death. I carry that anger toward my son, towards 2 relatives, and towards my son’s teacher. So, I pray every day for their healing and peace. I kickstarted this daily practice during Lent which I’ll continue during the rest of the year.
I have learned to be more comfortable in my life as a Catholic. It’s easy to be a practicing Catholic when one lives in an area where Catholics are like locusts on the ground. It’s not so easy when one is out in the wilderness attempting to keep the fire going on the hill. But, God has put a new community of believers into my life with the purpose of deepening my knowledge of my faith.
I am reminded again and again during this Lent that I have much work to do. I have made progress in knowing God. I have made progress in loving God. But serving God? I have much to learn and practice:
The Spiritual Works of Mercy:
- Admonish the sinner.
- Instruct the ignorant.
- Counsel the doubtful.
- Comfort the sorrowful.
- Bear wrongs patiently.
- Forgive all injuries.
- Pray for the living and the dead.
2 dogs and a house 
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