Today is the first Sunday of the lenten season. We all know that Lent is all about crawfish boils, fish frys, and other seafood delights. I think we should be required to eat meat on Fridays during Lent, rather than to give it up. That would be more of a sacrifice for us in this part of the world.
       Because of all of this we tend to lose focus on why we do these things. Why do we give up meat during Lent? Why do we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday? For the sake of space I’ll provide two answers to why we do this.
   The first answer is because we are sinners. We all sin. I sin. You sin. Our sin, from the most serious mortal sin, to the smallest venial sin that we can think of, is an offense to God’s infinite love for us. He loves us beyond measure. Our sin offends God, who is love itself. As a way of making it up to Him we deprive ourselves of things during Lent. Giving up meat is what we all do communally as Catholics, but we all should do more on our own as well.
   This is why are given penances in Confession. The penance that the priest gives to us to give us a little push in this direction, doing things for God to make it up to Him. The fact of the matter is that we cannot fully make it up to Him, as Jesus’ death on the Cross does that for us. But it is still good for us to do these things because it shows Him our love. Imagine a young girl breaks a window in the house. Can she pay to replace that window? Of course not. To apologize to her mom she picks some flowers by the side of the road and gives them to her. Those flowers do nothing to replace the window, but it helps appease the mother because her daughter is displaying an act of love. Both our penances in Confession, and what we do during Lent, is to show God how much we love Him.
   This leads me right into the second answer, and that is it is to bring us closer to Christ. What we do during Lent is to bring us closer to Him. We deprive ourselves of things to remind us that all we need is Jesus. Our focus and attention should be on Him, yet life gets in the way. Holy Mother Church, in her wisdom, has provided this season of Lent for us in order to grow closer to Christ, and to deepen our love for Him.
   This is the end goal to Lent, to be closer to Him, and to have a deeper love for Him. We can pretty much measure how successful Lent was for us by this analytic. Lent is not about how much we give up, or how intense it is for us. Lent is not the Church’s exercise/diet program. Lent is about acknowledging the particular sins we are attached to, doing things that help weaken our attachment to those sins, and becoming closer to Jesus.
     May everyone have a good Lent this year.