Obviously it's not possible to "win" Lent… but if the goal is to come to a new understanding of our own sinfulness and God's mercy, then I've scored. Here is a story about how God taught me a lesson, and then taught me that EXACT SAME LESSON all in the same day… God is pretty cool.
This all happened two days ago. I woke up and ate leftover pulled pork for breakfast and then later I had a buffalo chicken sub from Subway for lunch… yum. But why is that relevant? Because two days ago was FRIDAY. And not just any Friday… but a FRIDAY IN LENT. For those who don't know, Catholics "abstain" from eating meat on Fridays in Lent. It's not like a mortal sin to mess this up, but it's something that the whole Church is called to do, and whenever ALL of us are doing something, it's pretty special.
I think that most Catholics can resonate with the experience of completely forgetting that it was Friday, or even forgetting that it was Lent altogether and they had resolved to be different for 40 days. But what I did two days ago was different because NINE days ago (another Friday in Lent) I had chicken soup for lunch… GASP.
Later (two days ago) I was driving and was hit by a pretty powerful realization. Obviously Lent isn't about not eating meat on Fridays, but it IS about taking an intentional look at our relationships with God. See, I don't just forget not to eat meat on Fridays, I often forget that I am a follower of Christ.
I didn't eat the meat because I was feeling defiant and I don't sin out of defiance either. I ate the meat (and I sin) out of carelessness and inattention. And because my relationship with Christ is not first-and-foremost in my attention I frequently make choices that I would not make if I first asked myself, "Is this something a Christian should say… do… eat?" In many ways the defiant sinner is holier than I am because at least they are thinking about God when they choose to sin… I'm just not thinking about God at all.
But eating the meat was kind of an abstract lesson for me… one that God made VERY FREAKING CONCRETE like five hours later.
So when I had my "driving epiphany" I was driving to a retreat for Youth and Young Adult Ministers in the Archdiocese of Detroit. During the night prayer service they mentioned that the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be available to us and I wanted to go.
(A brief aside on my Sacrament of Reconciliation habits. I don't receive this Sacrament anywhere near as often as I need to, but I always go when it is offered, and in my line of work that is sometimes frequently.)
Now when I go to Confession I always have to go to go first. This is because I am an extremely impatient person and this ugly side of me seems to come out most noticeably in the Confessional line. This night was no different. I flew through my examination of conscience and went into the confessional. I had pretty adequately examined myself but I hadn't thought about how long it had been since my last Confession, so when the priest asked me my wheels started spinning. I knew it had been recently so I just said "about six or seven weeks ago" and proceeded to confess my sins.
But that was a lie because my last confession was not, in fact, six or seven weeks ago… it was TWO weeks ago (when I had been on another retreat such as this one). This minor chronological snafu (like eating the meat on Friday) would not have been a huge deal EXCEPT that I pretty much confessed all of the same sins that I had confessed two weeks earlier. MEANING that I went to confession… confessed a bunch of sins… then committed most of those sins again over the course of the next two weeks… and wound up needing to ask forgiveness all over again.
Again, I don't sin defiantly, I sin because of carelessness and inattention. Further proof that I need to make my relationship with God a more constant focus of my attention. These two experiences (eating meat and going to confession) probably had to both happen on one day because I would have missed their significance otherwise. I probably miss so much more on a daily basis.
So yeah, you can't "win" Lent… but we are supposed to reflect on our own sinfulness and upon God's mercy. The mercy part of all of this is that God is the furthest thing from careless and inattentive and that He continues to teach us, inspire us, humble us… no matter how often we sin (or eat meat on Fridays during Lent).
