In his message for Lent, Pope Francis exhorted the faith not to let “this season of grace pass in vain!” The Holy Father is echoing a sentiment that we have nearly all experienced. We have all had the experience of letting Lent pass us by and many of us, despite the best of intentions, will suffer the same fate this Lent unless we do something different. We need not just encouragement but a paradigm shift to see Lent and its purpose differently than ever before.
This paradigm shift begins with an understanding of the history of Lent. This does not mean that we need to look at how the Church has classically celebrated Lent, but to understand where it comes from. Like all the events within the Liturgical Calendar, the season of Lent is given to make the specific mysteries of Christ’s life present to us. The particular mystery attached to Lent is Christ’s forty days in the desert. Christ was driven by the Spirit into the desert for 40 days of prayer and fasting with one of the purposes being to obtain all the graces for all the Lents of all Christians for all time. He did this not in any generic way, but in a very specific way because each member of the Faithful individually was there with Him. As Pope Pius XII reminds us, “In the crib, on the Cross, in the unending glory of the Father, Christ has all the members of the Church present before Him and united to Him in a much clearer and more loving manner than that of a mother who clasps her child to her breast, or than that with which a man knows and loves himself” (Mystici Corporis Christi,75). Lent then is the time where we go to Christ in the desert to lay claim to those graces He had merited for us. We go not just in spirit but in truth because we are already there.
How We Should “Do” Lent
This understanding not only changes how we view Lent, but also how we do Lent. Our typical approach is to see it as something primarily done by us. We come up with a plan to “give up X” or “do this thing X” for Lent and then try to white-knuckle our way through it. But if what we said above is true, then the proper way to look at it is that Christ is doing Penance through us. The oft misquoted and equally misunderstood Scholastic maxim that grace perfects nature is apropos here. Grace does not “build on nature” as if we do a little (or as much as we can) and God will do the rest. It is all done by Christ—“I live no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Lent is no different.
This might sound passive or even quietistic, but it is the very opposite. All grace requires our free response, but it first requires that we remove those impediments that keep us from adopting the true spirit of Penance that Christ won for us. We often forget this as our primary role. And this is why many of us struggle through Lent. We try to do Penance without having the grace of Penance.
Therefore our first acts should be to obliterate the obstacles. These obstacles are not only interior but come from those unquestioned beliefs we have adopted from the spirit of the world. These obstacles, two in particular, are the focus of this article and the next. We will not fully receive the graces of Lent until we remove the spirits of self-esteem and luxury.
The Problem of Self-Esteem
Who could possibly have a problem with self-esteem? To ask the question is to reveal that we have been infected with the spirit of the world. For the spirit of the world always sends us mixed messages, locking us firmly in no-man’s land. It takes some truth and twists it just enough that it blinds us to the implications of that truth. It usually starts by baptizing it with a new name. Then the new term, piggybacking on the old term, is given value by fiat. “Self-esteem” is a prime example of this.
Self-esteem or “confidence in one’s own worth” is a psychological replacement for a theological term, dignity. That a human being has worth is unquestionable. But what has to be questioned is why a person has worth, that is, why a person should have any confidence in their worth. The world would have us believe that the currency of “self-esteem” is valuable simply by fiat. But it is not. It is valuable currency because it rests upon the God-standard. Human persons only have value because they are made in the image of God and because God has made Himself into the image of a man in Jesus Christ. Our confidence lies in both of these things—our inherent God-imagedness and our offer of God-likedness in Christ. The first can never be taken away, while the second must be achieved.
The problem with self-esteem is that it overemphasizes the first and totally ignores the second. The odd thing is that many in the Church have tried to “re-theologize” self-esteem through the language of “Temple of the Holy Spirit”. This term is thrown around as an attempt to convince someone of their own worth. But that is not how either Scripture or Tradition has understood it. When St. Paul uses the term it is meant as a corrective to live up to the supreme gift of redemption (which includes the Divine Indwelling). Tradition has taught that only those in a state of grace, that is those who have kept themselves unstained by serious sin, that are Temples of the Holy Spirit. The language also betrays itself because a Temple, while it is the earthly home of Divinity, is also, and one might say primarily, the place of sacrifice. In other words, you cannot say someone is a Temple of the Holy Spirit while not also calling them to make the necessary sacrifices within that same Temple.
This leads us now to why the spirit of self-esteem is an obstacle to the spirit of Lent. It always causes us to overvalue ourselves and destroys our spirit of sacrifice and penance. If you don’t believe me, then let me propose a hypothetical. Suppose, to use a seemingly trivial example, you are waiting for a parking space in a crowded shopping center and someone steals the space from you. Now suppose you told me about it and I said “you deserved it.” What would be your response?
I would bet that you would be angry with me and maybe even accuse me of being unjust. But in truth, I would infallibly be right no matter what the situation was. How do I know this? Because God in His Providence thought you did. Otherwise He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. This seems crazy until we follow out the line of reasoning.
Returning to our hypothetical, did God know the person was going to steal the space and did He allow it to happen? Without question, but the important question is why. And the answer ought to be “so that I could willingly accept it as penance for something I did wrong.” In other words, you may not have deserved it this time, but you never got what you deserved last time. The only thing that stops us from seeing this is our self-esteem. “The space was mine and he had no right to take it.” True, but that is not the point. The point is that he did you a favor. He gave you an opportunity to undo the harm you did to yourself when you sinned previously. You offended God and all you have to endure is finding another space? Yes, because your measly sacrifice when united to Christ in the desert becomes powerful. Or you could just get stuck in how poorly treated you were and “pay down to the last penny” later (c.f. Mt 5:26). Purgatory now is always better than Purgatory later.
So free from the false myth of self-esteem were the saints that they could even practice this for the big things. Not that they became doormats per se, but because they “humbly regarded the other person has more important than yourself” (Phil 2:3) that the only reason they put a stop to it is because of the harm the other person was doing to himself. In other words they would speak up not because of self-esteem but because of charity. In the spiritual life why we do what we do matters just as much as what we do.
The extreme cases obviously are far harder said than done, so we ought to just start developing the wisdom for the less extreme cases; not just because they are easier but because they are far more common. This Lent let go of your self-esteem and see if there isn’t real growth in the spirit of Penance. After all, these are the best kinds of Penance because they are not self-chosen, but come from the Provident hand of God. When you meet with some slight during Lent, even if it seems like a big deal, say “I deserve this” and thank God for forming a spirit of Penance in you.
Next time, we will examine the second worldly obstacle: luxury.