Dai­ly Reflec­tion
April 4, 2021

East­er morning…the Lenten days of fast­ing, alms­giv­ing and repent­ing are over.  Christ’s res­ur­rec­tion vivid­ly demon­strates that love is always stronger than fear or hate or even death. Cer­tain­ly, some­thing to cel­e­brate. And giv­en what we have all been through this past year, we all real­ly need rea­sons to cel­e­brate, to find joy.

So, why do my thoughts keep return­ing to the Sun­day two weeks before East­er?  “Amen, amen, I say to you unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it pro­duces much fruit.”

More than any time of the litur­gi­cal year, Lent calls us to “die to self” so that we can ful­ly use our gifts and tal­ents to fos­ter the city of God here and now. The sea­son of Lent invites us to move away from being part of the “stiff necked” crowd to become peo­ple who depend on God, who desire a strong rela­tion­ship with God. It gives us space to move away from the “I do it myself” atti­tude that my daugh­ter Emma fre­quent­ly told me when she was 2 years old; to see­ing that I need God, that God’s guid­ance will lead me where I called to go. And to see that I don’t have to “do it myself”, because God is always there, always ready to help me move towards God’s love and forgiveness.

While I would like to report that, because of the work I did this past Lent, that Iam no longer a mem­ber of the “stiff necked peo­ple”, alas, it is not true. I have not ‘risen’ above my fears, beyond my wants.  That will take much longer than 40 days!

What I did learn this Lent, is the pow­er of the pause…to take a deep breath before I react.  This seems to de-esca­late my inter­ac­tions. It can slow down a sit­u­a­tion, so it doesn’t get out of hand. That pause can be a moment of grace that gives me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to take a step back….to see that I have a choice in how to con­tin­ue a con­ver­sa­tion or a task. It is a prac­tice I will need to nur­ture. I am grate­ful to Vic­tor Fran­kl for his writ­ings about the pow­er of paus­ing. He says that paus­ing gives us the pow­er and the free­dom to make a dif­fer­ent choice.

Although this is not in keep­ing with the Church’s litur­gi­cal cal­en­dar, I am going to keep work­ing on my Lenten res­o­lu­tions. Where/how do need to ‘die to self’ so that I can throw out the “yeast of mal­ice and wicked­ness”?  What are my fears and inse­cu­ri­ties that make me sus­cep­ti­ble to the “yeast of mal­ice and wicked­ness” and/or encour­age me reject the “unleav­ened bread of sin­cer­i­ty and truth”?  What keeps me hold­ing fast to beliefs that do not serve God and could harm others?

I am afraid I am in for a long Lent, but some­how, I am look­ing for­ward to this journey.