What a gift the Church has given us in the keeping of the holy season of Lent. It is a time to prepare to celebrate the great feast of Easter, the central tenet of our faith. But it is also a time to grow in our faith. Through our practices of prayer and penance and denying ourselves we may grow in holiness. When we deny ourselves we strengthen our souls as we gain stamina in resisting temptation. Every year we are given this opportunity as a gift to treasure and embrace. When I find myself and my family bumbling and stumbling along in our spiritual lives, I think to myself, "It's okay, Lent will be here soon." And we know we will have that special opportunity to try again, to try harder, to refocus and stretch and grow ourselves. I often think of Isaiah, how very easy it all sounds. Wouldn't it be so lovely to have an angel come and touch my lips with a burning coal and instantly cleanse me of all my unseemliness and sin? But like Paul, my thorn remains, though I wish repeatedly it could be snatched away. My thorn is sin, and it pokes me so. It is so fierce at times it pokes through to those around me. And it is like another thorn piercing the precious Head of Our Lord. But the spiritual life is an arduous journey. There aren’t any quick fixes. If we wish to travel long and far, then we must be prepared to travel long and far.
But there is balm for the wounds of sin. There is refreshment for tired travelers. From today’s Mary Vitamin we have this most beautiful image from St. Bonaventure:
“The desert is the heart of the sinner, which is indeed devoid of grace and virtue. The aromatical spice, the sweet incense of the soul is the aspiration of hope for pardon. The Blessed Virgin Mary, therefore, came up from the desert as a pillar of smoke [Song of Songs 3:6], when, by her prayers the heart of the sinner received the smoking incense of pardon. This smoke is generated from the aromatical myrrh of contrition, and of the incense in confession, and from all the powders o f the perfumer in manifold satisfactions.”
The Mirror of the Blessed Virgin
Oh, Let my prayer rise like incense, my upraised hands like an evening sacrifice!
Let us begin our Lenten journeys with hope in our hearts, the sweetness of pardon that we know was already purchased for us. We will fall and we will fail, but we will press on. Let us call upon Our Mother to lead us on this journey through Lent. She, as always, will tend and refresh us and lead us steadily towards her Son.
