Refining Dreary

Paul Gustave Dore, A Midnight Dreary

Having arrived nearly at its end, I am just now getting around to talking about Lent.  I haven't any profound meditations on the theological and liturgical meanings of the season.  Rather, I offer some insight into my own Lent.

Historically speaking, I don't like Lent.  It is long, and it comes at the most dreadful time of year when the snow has been around interminably, the skies remain a consistent, brooding, dull gray, and people having grown weary of the cold become listless and sulky.  Moreover, for the ten years during which I was in formation, Lent hailed the arrival of Seminary Evaluations.  Though a necessary evil, no one enjoyed the process.  "Dreary", I suppose, might describe how I have known the season of Lent.  This year was different.

As far as my own penances go, I adopted two principally.  First, I would get out of bed by 7:00 AM or earlier.  While this does not seem a sacrifice to most people I suspect, it was a major sacrifice for me.  I hate morning.  It is a deeply painful experience for me to be required to communicate with parishioners in the sacristy as I prepare for the 7:00 AM weekday Masses.  I am generally much better by the end of Mass, but prior, I am best left undisturbed.  This penance has proven a nearly total failure.

Second, in keeping with a months long argument I have been having with the Lord and the revelations I wrote about on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday, I decided it was time to take up arms against my vanity, swallow my pride, and ask for help in losing weight.  In the first week of Lent, I saw my dietician for the first time.  Though she forbade me from eating nearly everything I like most, this resolution has proven enormously successful.  Thus far, I have lost around twenty pounds, my mood (even before the early Mass) has improved tremendously, and I find a new joyfulness.

Likewise, I redoubled my commitment to my prayer.  My reflections the last time I wrote are connected to this action.  I find that the Lord is taking me more and more into the mystery of his own pierced heart.  There are times when I hang with him on the Cross, knowing full well his presence, but crying out with him, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  These are what I can only describe as a hard consolation; they reveal the depths of love and are filled with a simultaneous experience of agony and joy.  My heart has been pierced, and to be a good priest, I must allow it to be pierced over and over again.

Arising from my prayer have come both a new and insatiable desire to be holy and a longing to sacrifice.  The latter of these is connected with my celebration of the Mass and with what I wrote in the previous paragraph.  Such sacrifice, I believe, will lead me to holiness.  For my people who read this, please remind me to be holy.  Don't let me off the hook.  I can do nothing for you if I do not attempt to be holy myself first and foremost.

In a new way, the Lectionary readings for the season of Lent have had profound meaning this year.  I have preached repeatedly on the need to use Lent as a time to tame our wills.  All that I have preached has been equally applicable to myself as to my people.  I seem to be listening to myself in a way that I had not always done before.

Holy Week and Easter now loom before me.  I will sing the Exsultet for the first time at the parish in Custer this year before baptizing (and confirming) my sister-in-law and my niece.  Easter promises to be especially glorious.

All in all, the Lord has been doing tremendous work in me this Lent, and it has been a joyful season full of hope, gratitude, and gladness.  These adjectives, I find, are much more satisfying than is "dreary".