Ep.25 | ‘Lent-ing’ as a couple
(Meditation song at the end - Hosea by Weston Priory)
Lent – the 40 days before Easter most Catholics acknowledge as a time to ‘give something up.’
Growing up, having gone to Catholic schools, discussions revolved around what big heroic act you were going to take. The go to – chocolate. Some brave souls – TV. Others – taking extra time to go volunteer…very strange were the volunteering kinds…that wasn’t giving something up!
Well, it was those kids I should have paid closer attention to in the end. Maybe they too didn’t quite know the big ‘why’, but at least they were on the right track.
And what track exactly?
To truly embrace the penitential nature of this season through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Oh the number of times I’ve heard this, but it wasn’t until Lent, in the year I met my husband, did I take it seriously.
I honestly cannot remember exactly what I did for the season of Lent that year, but I do know that the celebration of Easter was on a whole other level…the celebration that through Jesus, WE ARE new creations…that my former ways were buried and redeemed into a new life!
For a gal that had it with men and relationships, realizing that all along I was looking in all the wrong places, causing a wake of pain for myself and others, searching for a perfect love – for affirmation I longed for, for acceptance I craved, for healing I needed, for familial friendship I thrived on, for forgiveness and redemption from my past….
Because of that Lent, the cycles of my life that I was captive to for decades BROKE. I was free! And I fell in love with my saviour, Our Lord…so much so, that I was pretty certain that I was going to happily accept the vocation of living single and for God. I couldn’t see myself joining a religious congregation, but I could see myself living the consecrated life.
I was so certain of this, that when I met my husband, I told him that’s what I was planning. And funny enough, he thought he was going to be a priest hehe.
That being said, with every Lent since, this season has truly been lifechanging. And every year I realize, that you have to ‘put the work in’ in order for that change to happen.
And with last year being our first Lent together as a married couple, I realized just how much of a blessing walking this journey is as a team.
It’s not easy people! We’re literally imitating Christ in His walk through the desert, the time of preparation and purification before He faced the tragic end of His life – the ultimate sacrifice for us. He faced the devil’s temptations. He was without His beloved apostles, family, and friends. He suffered before the ultimate suffering.
And so too for us, we walk these 40 days, doing what we can to better imitate Christ.
We do what we can to fortify our prayer life and our walk with Jesus, just as Jesus spent His time drawing closer to God in His time in the desert.
We sacrifice/fast from the things in our lives that distract us – from loving/having a relationship with God (the one that Jesus sacrificed His life for) and from being able to notice the needs of others and love them. Fasting also allows us to experience a hunger and longing, which ultimately should remind us of our eternal hunger for God and reorient and reprioritize our lives towards Him.
Through sacrifices as well, we atone for our sins – our own sins, those of our families, those of our friends, for those unknown to us around the world, and those who continue to suffer in Purgatory painfully awaiting for the end of their purification before entering heaven. It’s because of Jesus that atonement is even possible. We’re waaaay to imperfect to attempt to offer anything on our own behalf to make up for our mistakes. And God knew this. So He gave us Jesus on the Cross to come lay down our imperfections, and through His great mysterious ways, we now are able to unite our offerings to Christ’s perfect offering (being that He is God and all).
And now since we ourselves have been made into living offerings, not only do we have our intentional sacrifices and those we experience to give (which we see as the painful things), we can even give of ourselves in love (in a positive way) – cue in almsgiving! We can offer up song and dance. We can offer up the time we spend loving others…through conversation, through quality time, through reconciling.
And so, for my husband and I this Lent, we continue to strive for another life-changing season. We each have different observances we are doing, but there are also things we are doing together. For example, we said we were giving up eating any meals in front of the TV and gaining back how we began our relationship – eating at the dining table. We also plan to sing more together and have more praise dance parties too!
Most importantly, we’re prioritizing daily mass whether just one of us makes it or both. Admittedly, our schedules have revolved around our daughter and we thought we were unable to attend daily mass as we once did. However, the moment we had the resolve that one of us going is better than neither of us going, and that we would ask to pull on our sacramental graces of our marriage to allow for both of our souls to benefit if only one of us receives the Lord, our morning flow has allll of a sudden altered for us to be able to attend 😊 And it’s surely been much needed. I noticed how for the past several weeks, I’ve been so short-tempered. I was just getting annoyed at things very quickly. There was a particular morning too where I woke up just mad and it was that day that I realized my soul needed its spiritual sustenance.
So in addition to prioritizing daily mass, for me personally, I’m going to spend more time reaching out to my family and friends, without giving the excuse that I’m too busy. That includes stopping and having very intentional conversations with those who I/we see on our walks around the neighborhood. I’ve also slipped in my ongoing interior conversations with the Lord throughout the day, so with every change of major activity for the day (like moving from doing the dishes to going to work on the computer), I shall try my best to offer the prayer below (as inspired by our wonderful priest friend):
Personal prayer: Jesus, I love you. Everything I have is yours. Yours I am. Yours I want to be. Please do with me whatever you will. Amen.