Simple practices to make the most of the season.
Episode 52 of the Make Saints podcast: “5 things to do this Lent”
the episode script
Lent. If you know what that word means, you’re halfway there. If you don’t, then you don’t have anything to unlearn.
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Lent is usually known as the season before Easter.
It’s also known as the time when some Christians give things up or when Catholics eat fried fish.
This, of course, isn’t what Lent is about. Just the stuff we associate with it.
Lent is a season of self-examination, discipline, and study. It is, in a nutshell, a time devoted to doing the things we’re supposed to want to do anyway.
But why?
The early church gave us a really good reason.
If we don’t take the time now to do the work, we aren’t likely to let Easter change us.
And being changed is the point.
How to Change.
The church gives us a five-point plan for preparing to change. And it is right in the Ash Wednesday liturgy many of us hear every year.
First, however, we’re reminded why we Lent. Because the earliest Christians took this time to prepare people to become Christian and to prepare notorious sinners who wanted to change their lives to return to the community. And all of the rest of us had to prepare for both of these groups to show up and change our community.
So we’re invited to self-examination, repentance, prayer, fasting, self-denial, and reading and meditating on Scripture.
To put this in other terms:
To reflection, turning away from sin, prayer, fasting, and reading:
Reflect, turn, pray, fast, read
Those are the five things we can do this Lent.
Here are a few ideas:
1. Reflect
Take time every day to think about life, who you are, what you value, and how you act. Take up journaling. Use a gratitude journal. Be mindful of who you are.
2. Turn
Seek to change bad habits, restore relationships, or make amends with someone. Reach out to someone you have never thanked and offer your gratitude to them.
3. Pray
Spend time each day in prayer. Wherever you are or whenever you can. I like to pray at stop lights when I’m driving. And because I get to see other people going when I want to be going, it’s a good cue to remember to pray for others.
4. Fast
Take a break from something you do habitually. Not as a value judgment, but as a means of self-denial and to gain perspective. Be intentional with your choices.
5. Read
Scripture, of course. Or spiritual writings. Psalms are a great way to read Scripture. Or read the gospel of Matthew, one chapter at a time each day. Or Mark. You can read a third of a chapter of Mark starting on Ash Wednesday and finish it around Good Friday.
These are five things anyone can do to do the work of Lent. Not because fried fish isn’t a tasty way to keep a holy Lent. But because the point of Lent isn’t the discipline, but what this discipline prepares us for:
To be changed. And to accept that others will be changed, too.
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I’m Drew Downs. Thanks for listening to Make Saints. Because (eternal) life is hard. And we could use all the help we can get.