In today’s culture the practice of lent can be looked down upon as a meaningless deprivation, exterior piety or yet another restricted group of religious people. Sometimes they are right if our emphasis is on what we give up and what we say NO to, of course then it does look this way.
However each resisted temptation is another opportunity to throw figurative flowers to Jesus and declare our love for him who loved us first. Lent is a spiritual gem, all of a sudden the lack of a chocolate biscuit raises the heart and mind towards God... This is far from meaningless! The church at its heart is not a NO but a resounding YES and the only time it says NO is to another NO. (An American bishop) for example - The NO to life in abortion or the NO to true happiness in sex before marriage. The emphasis of lent should be put back on who we have said YES to rather than what we are saying NO to. Our YES however goes way beyond a superficial choice between two things, our YES must mirror Mary’s YES as was pointed out so beautifully earlier in the blog, an abandonment to our own will so that our very soul magnifies the lord (Luke 1:46) but also it must mirror Christ’s yes, who though he was God, emptied himself taking the form of a slave (Philippians 2:6-7)
Our YES must lead us in to this emptying of self.
Our spiritual heights are not a YES that leads us to be good people and nice men and women rather a YES that empties us to respond to a privileged call to perfection (Matthew 5:48). Not to be obsessed with crossing I’s and dotting T’s but to empty ourselves of ourselves, so that the light of Christ might shine perfectly in us and illuminate our true selves -
“Saints of the third millennium”
John Paul the second said life is found in a sincere gift of self. As we approach holy week and contemplate on the ultimate gift of self in Jesus I want to reflect on the words of Pope Benedict: “Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person.”
As Jason evert a Chastity speaker once said; what good is our YES if we cannot say NO. So people are right, lent is a NO - a NO that refines our YES!
Paschal Uche, 21,
Studying Pharmacy at Nottingham University,
From the Diocese of Westminster.
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