Begin with the Gospel for Ash Wednesday. Nothing offers better guidance on our Lenten journey than the words Jesus spoke to his disciples, read during the liturgy of this day:
“Give alms…Pray to your Father…Fast without a gloomy face…” (Matthew 6:1-18)
Almsgiving
Giving alms, Jesus teaches, means making the needs of others our own, especially the needy of our world. They are all around us: children and the old, the sick and the suffering, families and individuals, next-door neighbors and people in lands far away. What shall we give to the needy this lent? In deciding, decide generously. After all, before us is the great alms Jesus gave: “He loved us, and gave himself up for us.”
Prayer
The Lenten season calls us to pray. But prayer, Jesus teaches, is much more than saying words. “Go into your room, and close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.” Before you pray, enter the inner room of your heart. Shut the door to the noise, the trivialities, the countless cares grabbing for attention. Put them aside. In the quiet place of your heart, with faith as your guide, speak to your God. A gracious Father listens, and he knows what you need.
Fasting
Today’s consumer society looks on fasting itself as gloomy. Urging everyone to eat, drink, and buy more and more, our world today has made fasting unfashionable. Food and drink, clothes and amusements — the good things of life — can turn into your captors, Jesus teaches. In our acquisitive, pleasure-oriented society, fasting is a way of keeping ourselves free. This Lent, recognizing the hold things have on us, let us try, with God’s help, to keep them in their right place. Some reasonable abstaining from food, drink and entertainments can help us do that.
Excerpts from The Spirit of Lent by Victor Hoagland, C.P. retrieved from: www.cptryon.org/prayer/season/lentsp.html