Lent in the Shadow of Death

“Remember, man, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” The priest uttered these words on Ash Wednesday as he traced the black cross on my forehead. Like all Catholics, I began Lent under the pall of death. The view outside my window echoed the lifeless theme. The trees were bare, the birds were gone, and the sky was gray. Five days later marked the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death. After five years the loss is still painful and the sorrow palpable.

The Thin Veil of Death

Still feeling the sting of my mother’s death freshly called to mind, I watched with both amazement and admiration as Fr. Paul Scalia celebrated the funeral Mass of his father, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. With an aching heart he gave his father one final gift: a Mass of Christian Burial, offered with reverence and dignity, centered on Christ. In his fifteen- minute homily, Fr. Scalia offered the most complete catechesis on Catholic theology and doctrine I have ever witnessed. There’s so much in this homily that could serve as a source of reflection; but one passage stands out as particularly relevant to the Lenten season:

Finally we look to Jesus forever, into eternity. Or better, we consider our own place in eternity, and whether it will be with the Lord. Even as we pray for Dad to enter swiftly into eternal glory, we should be mindful of ourselves. Every funeral reminds us of just how thin the veil is between this world and the next, between time and eternity, between the opportunity for conversion and the moment of judgment.

 The somber tones of Lent and the pain and sorrow of death would be unbearable without the reality of the Resurrection and the hope of Heaven. Yet this hope requires our cooperation. With his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Christ our Lord paved the way for our salvation. With God’s grace we can walk that path. But the choice is ours. Our free will decides our fate for all eternity.

Blessed Franz Jägerstätter declared, “The important thing is that we do not let a single day go by in vain without putting it to good use for eternity.” Lent is our opportunity to refocus our lives on eternity. It is the chance to strengthen habits that bring about our conversion.

The traditional disciplines of Lent are fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. Each of these is meant to increase our detachment to this world. We give up desserts, not to fit better into our Easter finery, but to remind us that no earthly pleasure should obstruct our path to Heaven. We may start out with great enthusiasm but find that we quickly stumble. That doesn’t mean we failed. The point isn’t to be perfect by Easter but to be changed from where we were at Ash Wednesday. Our metric is not a tally of how many times we violated our Lenten intentions but rather whether or not our efforts brought us closer to an eternity with Our Lord.

Lent in the Year of Mercy

In 2015 Pope Francis exhorted us to give up indifference for Lent, to divert our gaze from ourselves to our neighbor. In 2016 the Holy Father urges us now to reach out to our neighbor with mercy. He reminds us, “faith finds expression in concrete everyday actions meant to help our neighbors in body and spirit.” This Lent I decided to try to step up my game in both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

A frequent Lenten practice is to go through our closets and cupboards and simplify our lives by getting rid of excess possessions. Boxes and bags of our unwanted but perfectly useable treasures are carted off to the local charitable thrift shop. I find this exercise both cathartic and liberating. There’s nothing wrong with this practice; and it is certainly a valid example of a corporal work of mercy. But if I’m truthful with myself, the end result is often more about my clean closets and streamlined housekeeping and less about the welfare of my less fortunate neighbors.

So this Lent, in addition to detaching myself from material possessions I already owned, I bought brand new children’s clothing and gave it to a local charity that provides aid to families. There was far less self-satisfaction but that is the point. My charity needs to be about my neighbor and not about me.

When I pray the Rosary, I usually offer it for the intentions of friends and family. There are so many people whom I love and for whom I am overjoyed to offer this prayer. This Lent I am offering each Rosary for a specific person with whom I need to reconcile. It may be someone who has hurt me personally. It may be someone whom I have never met but for whom I feel anger because he or she acted against the welfare of my family, my country or the Church.

This isn’t easy. Actually praying a Rosary and not just saying a Rosary takes time, a precious commodity in my life. As I pick up the beads, I have to overcome a sense of resentment that this person is occupying my prayer time. But then I begin. Every Hail Mary and Our Father feels penitential. Once done, I know that I have offered in all sincerity prayers for someone who would probably express little understanding or gratitude if he knew of my efforts. But I have laid this broken relationship at the foot of the Cross and trust in God’s grace and healing mercy.

Lent begins in the shadow of death,  but it doesn’t end there. It can be an arduous journey; but fortunately our fasting, prayers, and almsgiving lift our eyes above the darkness and sorrow of death and into the hope of eternity. Christ’s glorious Resurrection on Easter Sunday offers a vision of what awaits us when we cast off indifference, die to self, and live in Him.