This is not a complaint about the weather, or winter, or February. So bear with me!
Not all months are created equal. February is not only short, but it is short
on appeal. Now, in the southern
hemisphere things may be different, and if you share your birthday month with
George and Abe you may object, but none of the people I know wish that February
could linger for just a few weeks more.
This year, the month presented
precisely the face for which she is infamous, and we endured every one of her
bad habits with weary familiarity. I
have a new insight, though, into why this February was worse than usual: It
wasn’t Lent yet.
Now how can that be a problem, you
ask? Wouldn’t it be worse if it were
Lent? Lent sucks the fun out of
everything and imposes suffering where ordinarily there would be joy, doesn’t
it? Since February has so little joy, wouldn’t
Lent only make it worse?
Sed
contra,
I respond, Lent does not impose suffering at all. Rather, Lent does something good with the
suffering that is already ours.
You see, because we are Catholic
Christians, we have the amazing opportunity to transform our suffering into
something powerful and positive by uniting it to the suffering of Christ. This is what your mom, or grandma, or the
nuns who taught you were trying to get you to do when they said, Offer it up. When we offer our suffering to God with
Christ, especially that which we accept freely or take on willingly, it
contributes to the salvation of the world because it becomes part of Jesus’ saving sacrifice.
Now, that’s what we can do on our
own. But when we do it together with the
Church, which is the Body of Christ, everyone is yoked together in the same
service by the same Holy Cross. A truly
awesome power is put to work.
Lent is a time when the whole Church is
united in penance freely taken on and suffering willingly accepted. This union of intention and action bears
fruit in every participant far greater than his or her efforts merit. This is the grace of God at work, and the exchange of spiritual gifts
that is only available within the communion of the Church.
This is the power and attraction of
Lent. It takes what everyone has too
much of – sadness, suffering, disappointment, and want – and turns it into
something everybody needs more of: grace, mercy, and peace. But unlike so many popular projects, you
cannot just “do it yourself.” You can
only do it in union with the Church!
This year Easter is quite late – April
20 – so Lent begins later than we expect.
I submit to you the radical consideration that we need Lent, and
delaying it only makes our situation unhappier.
Last year Easter was early -- March 31 – so we have gone more than
eleven complete months without Lent, which is too long. Moreover, because Lent was delayed until
March, we didn’t have what we needed to deal with February. And this February was a humdinger.
So by a fluke of the calendar this
year, February fell five full days away from redemption: a thoroughly wretched
month, squandered. But do not
despair! Lent begins this week, finally, and all that
horsepower will be at your disposal. You
need only bring your sacrifices and your suffering, and the channels of grace
will be opened and running.
Monsignor Smith
