Sneaking in the Side Door

I've never actually been any good at Lenten practices, anymore than I am with New Year's resolutions. Despite the fact that I have led a temperate lifestyle for over 50 years, I am an undisciplined lout, and it could be argued that my temperance is the result not of any positive virtue but born of laziness -- I am not motivated enough to indulge in any excess.

I do follow the minimum requirements for fasting and abstinence, although these modern requirements are hardly a burden. I probably would have been a complete failure in the more strict pre-Vatican II days.

Nonetheless, I've kind of snuck in the side door of Lent this year by setting about to consider, as my Lenten practice, my inability to have a Lenten practice. It's a kind of daily owning up to my shortcomings.

I've had to consider my humanness. I've had to consider my limitations. My family knows, for instance, that I would do anything for them. I will do what I have to do to provide for them. I have told them however, that if we are all hungry, and the only job I can find is to be one of those iron workers who walk around on the steel girders of skyscrapers under construction, then they should prepare to starve to death, because I just can not do heights. I can't.

Step one of the 12 Steps is to admit to being powerless over an addiction -- I can't. It is difficult to stand before God and admit that there are areas in my life where I can't -- not that I won't, not that I choose not to -- I just can't. I confess to Almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts, in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do.

Step two is to come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. If Lent is not to become simply an indulgent self-flagellation, for Lent not to be an exercise in "Catholic guilt," then I have to push past the fact that I can't, and come to believe that the death and resurrection of Christ have meaning, have Power in my life.

Step five of the 12 steps is to "admit to God, ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Oh. Yeah, the confession part. Confessions are Saturday mornings, and since it's Lent, we got special Penance Services coming up shortly in several parishes in the area.

So it's been good so far, even if I'm not really good at it.

There are 23 days left until Easter.