Home        Answers to Questions / Editorial Articles listing

Examination of Lent

            So how have your forty days gone? Well, I hope. And if they have gone less well, don’t panic: there are still some days left of Lent, and you can still do some penance out of love for God and neighbor. For it is important to pray, fast and give alms, in whichever of the many ways each one can think of doing such things, to do penance for our sins, and for those of others, especially for the poor souls in Purgatory.

            Lent is forty days, of course, even if when you count it on the Calendar you come up with 46 days. Why is this? Lent lasts six full weeks. Six weeks by seven days equals 42 days. Then there is Ash Wednesday, and the Thursday, Friday and Saturday which follow it, making a total of 46. There are six Sundays of Lent, and Sunday is always and only the celebration of Easter, even during Lent.

            For this reason, there are some who refrain from doing their penances on the Sundays of Lent, to celebrate the resurrection. Others cultivate the spirit of perseverance by going the whole 46 days with renunciations, such as sweets, drinks, TV, and other such pleasures.

Of course, we renounce licit pleasures, as an extra sacrifice. It wouldn’t be a good sacrifice during Lent to say, “I’m going to refrain from stealing.” After all, there is a commandment against stealing, and it should not be done during Lent or ever. Rather, we make small promises or even larger vows to God by renouncing something good and licit, as a special act of love. It is our bare duty to renounce the evils of sin; it is an excess of love to renounce things which we could honorably enjoy. And so we make sacrifices out of love.

With one more week of Lent, it’s good to ask myself: have I kept my promise? Have I grown in faith, hope and love? Have I done penance? Have I removed sin from my life, or at least made real progress? And once we have our answers, focus our energy and resolution for this next week. For who knows: it might be the last week of my life, right?

There are some who, when they examine themselves, only look at the negative. “I’m the pits, this is horrible, I can’t believe how bad I am,” and on and on. They live by the motto that “A pessimist is simply a well-informed optimist.” Yet sometimes things go well in their lives, and they continue to exasperate the negative.

Why should we stop and see the positive? After all, maybe you made the promise to not eat chocolate, as a sacrifice, and you succeeded in keeping it, even when it was hard. Or you reduced TV watching to only four hours a week. Or you promised to you do a certain daily exercise, or to give a certain amount more to charities. And having promised, you did it! You succeeded.

Afraid of falling into pride, some souls will only turn even such positive results into self-recriminating castigations. But that’s not right. It’s not right, because it’s not true. If there is something good in your life, you have a duty to acknowledge the truth. More than that, you have a duty to praise God your Father. For if it weren’t for him, there would be almost nothing good in your life. It would be ingratitude to forget to thank God with a simple prayer such as, “Thank you, Father. You have helped me do what is good, and accomplish something great in your eyes. I could not have done this without your help. I now thank you, praise you, glorify you, and will proclaim your goodness to the whole world.” And such prayers are capable of making even the most die-hard pessimist full of that realism of faith which is enough to make every soul deeply joyful.

Therefore, examine your Lent. Repent for the bad; thank God for the good; and for heaven’s sake, persevere until the Easter Vigil Mass in your Lenten penances!