My Saturday afternoons are often busy with various events. Recently I had a few hours in between functions and was able to relax and do one of my favorite things, watch a sporting event on tv. In this instance it was a college basketball game. It was an important game as both teams were competing for the top seed in their conference tournament in hopes of getting a bye in the first round. One team dominated the first half in every aspect of the game including shooting, rebounding, time of possession and controlling the overall pace of the game. The sideline reporter, as is often done before halftime, interviewed the coach of the team that was behind and asked what his message would be in the locker room before the second half. He said that his team was pushing too hard, taking bad shots, making bad passes, and committing too many mistakes. They had gotten complacent and lost focus of how they should be playing. He said his message would be simple, get back to the basics.
Losing focus can happen to teams at the end of a long season. The solution, to take a step back, evaluate, and get back to fundamentals, is a simple one. The hard part is the execution. In life, just as in basketball, it is easy to lose sight of the basics. For the players, they had the opportunity to use halftime to evaluate their performance and make the necessary adjustments. I think we can look at Lent in the same way. Lent should be a time to break away from the superficial aspects of life and get back to the basics. The basics of our faith and the basics of who we are as disciples of Christ. It should be a time to shed the image of ourselves that we want others to see and look inward to find the person that God created in his likeness.
Our Lenten journey is one of reflection, sacrifice and prayer but to have a meaningful Lent, we should not lose sight of how this journey began, with the receiving of ashes. The significance of the ashes is to remind us of our mortality. When the priest says “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” we can reflect on the fact that we originated from God’s hands and will one day be returned to Him. The words, “Remember that you are dust,” call back to the passage from Genesis 2:7 that reads “then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The words, “and to dust you shall return,” serve as a reminder that all the material possessions that we accumulate in this life and things that we consider to be important, such as money and prestige, do not matter in the end. Ultimately, all these things will be lost, and we will return to God. We are reminded through this practice to turn over our hearts to the Lord and to use the forty days of Lent to walk on the path to renewal.
By following Jesus’s teachings in Matthew’s Gospel, the Church lights the path to renewal by calling us to participate in the acts of prayer, fasting and almsgiving during Lent. Praying daily helps bring us closer to God and strengthens our relationship with Him. Fasting helps to put our true needs in perspective and to make room for God in our lives. Giving alms, which can take the form of giving money, food, or other goods to those in need as well as performing acts of charity, is an essential aspect of the Christian life and allows us to imitate God’s love and show compassion to others. The three pillars that the church asks us to focus on during Lent, lay the groundwork for getting back to the basics and act as a means to know Christ better and follow His teachings more intimately.
On our path to renewal, we are reminded that Faith can be difficult. It requires us to look past our own wants and desires and trust in God’s undying love for us. A love that is so great that he sent his only son to save us. John 3:16- 17 states, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” As we contemplate Jesus’s own suffering and death on the cross so that we may have the possibility of eternal life, we are reminded of our own sins. Those sins of the past and those we live with today that stand in the way of us sharing fully in God’s love. During Lent we need to turn away from sin and turn towards the Lord. By turning our hearts over to God and letting go of those transgressions that plague us, we allow ourselves to grow closer to Him.
As we approach the halfway point of this Lenten season, it is a perfect time to examine how we are doing on our journey. The road that we travel will be full of bumps, twists and turns, and the occasional pothole which will cause us to stop and inspect the damage before proceeding more cautiously towards our destination. Just as we would do on any journey, it is a good idea to stop and check the map to make sure that we are on the correct path. We will inevitably make a wrong turn, but we need to remember that things will not always go as planned. The important thing is that we are making progress. If we can get back to the basics by focusing on the main pillars of Lent, we will be brought closer to God through prayer, we will be led away from sin and the things that get in the way of our relationship with God through fasting and we will make our journey a meaningful period of renewal through almsgiving and charity towards others.
Just as the basketball team used halftime to evaluate their performance and return to basics, let us use the remaining days of Lent to continue to do the things necessary to renew our faith, strengthen our relationship with God and to seek Jesus so that we may know Him, deepen our commitment to Him and learn to live a life of discipleship. Let us receive and bask in the love of God and correct those aspects of our lives that have gone off course. Let us prepare to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection with hope that we may one day share in eternal life. In his Lenten message in 2021, Pope Francis stated “During this season of conversion, let us renew our faith, draw from the ‘living water’ of hope, and receive with open hearts the love of God, who makes us brothers and sisters in Christ. At the Easter vigil, we will renew our baptismal promises and experience rebirth as new men and women by the working of the Holy Spirit.”
Our Lenten journey starts with the receiving of ashes and ends at the foot of the cross. May the road that we travel be one of renewal, conversion and discovery and be illuminated by the light of the Risen Lord on Easter Sunday.