Ash Wednesday has passed and the 40 days of fasting, prayer, and sacrifices before Easter, known as Lent is once more upon us.
If you’re like me and grew up Catholic, Lent, at some point, was the time when you had to give up chocolate and couldn’t watch as much TV as you wanted. This might still be how you view Lent. Or, if you never grew up with Lent and aren’t sure what it is, you might be thinking ‘what is it about?’
Whether you know Lent or not, I decided to get a new view of Lent. I asked four people who recently came into the Catholic Church to give me their insight into Lent. This article will explore the views of Caleb, a senior at in high school who was baptized into the Catholic Church last year; Jenna, a first-year college student who received full union with the Catholic Church last year; and Sam and Allie, a newly-married couple who journeyed together for full communion with the Church last year.
My first question when I interviewed these four was what their thoughts about Lent were before they joined OCIA (Office of Christian Initiation for Adults), the process for coming into the Catholic Church that they all went through. All four of my interviewees said, on some level, that they had no experience of Lent.
Sam claimed that “Lent was something I never really thought about.” Caleb, on the other hand, mentioned how his mom told him about Lent when he was 10 and he “didn’t want to do this (Lent)”. Allie also had prior knowledge about Lent because of some girls she knew in high school, and she was just glad she didn’t have to give up chocolate like they did. Jenna also had some knowledge that Lent existed, but it was a Catholic thing and she “never knew what it was about and never looked into it.” However, despite everyone’s original apathy towards Lent, after joining OCIA, their views seemed to take a drastic change.
During OCIA, everyone told me they gained a new appreciation for the season of Lent. Caleb told me he realized that there are Biblical connections to Lent that he never knew about. Jenna told me how she never got to experience something like Lent when she was a non-denominational, and during OCIA she realized how “it is a posture in your heart to turn you towards God.”
And Allie and Sam made comments that emphasized this point. Allie told me how she learned that Lent was a season of sorrow and repentance which allowed her to grow closer to God. Because although God always loves her “giving things up helps my side of the relationship with Him.”
Sam emphasizes this point in how he realized how Lent was a time to “give things up for God…to better yourself for Him.” Despite everyone originally viewing Lent as something that they were not interested in and even did not want to learn more about, their views changed. Everyone chose to look more closely at Lent and discovered how it is a season to grow closer to God by recognizing its connection to His Word, or by seeing it as a way to grow in your relationship with Him.
While these people have only been Catholics for less than a year, their views of Lent are profound. And they have only continued to fall in love with the season of Lent and discover more about it. When I asked them how their views of Lent are now, their responses were truly amazing.
Caleb told me how, right now, he views Lent “as a time of penance for the wrong doings I’ve done, to be more productive, and develop the gifts God has given me.”
Jenna agreed with this point in her own interview in her claim that Lent “is a reset… where you can center your life more on Him, than on your own schedule.”
Sam takes the season of Lent a step further in claiming how he wants to build good habits now to change his life forever.
Allie even claims that Lent is not just a personal season of repentance, but “it is a beautiful season where we get to experience the whole church turning back to Christ.” Lent, for these people, has turned into a time of growth. To be more productive in one’s life, school, and faith, as well as a time to develop habits to grow closer to God and to the rest of those who recognize this season.
At the end of my interviews with everyone, I asked them how Lent was significant to them personally. And their testimonies are truly beautiful.
For Caleb, Lent was the reason he became Catholic. He attended last year’s Ash Wednesday Mass with a friend and met the director of OCIA which started Caleb on his journey to the Catholic Church. And now, even though Caleb says Lent can be hard, he truly believes that “being Christian is a good thing.” For Jenna, Lent has allowed her to understand her faith more and discover the beauty of fasting because when you fast “you crucify your own flesh” for His sake. And while fasting can be difficult, “if you never challenge yourself to be like Jesus…you’re not going that extra step to be closer to Him.”
And for Sam and Allie, Lent has become a time when they can come together in prayer and grow closer to God and each other through “the first fruits of the morning…in praying the morning liturgy of the hours.”
As someone who has been Catholic my entire life, I can say that I have only realized how beautiful Lent is a few years ago. It is truly refreshing to see how seriously new Catholics view Lent. For them, it is a season of prayer and fasting that is not for the sake of show, but for the sake of drawing closer to others and to the Lord. Jenna even encourages all non-Catholics to look into Catholicism as “it helps you grow in your relationship with God and helps you be more reverent” and Caleb backs Jenna up with his encouragement for all Christians to “keep going to Church.”
Whether you recognize the season of Lent or not, I encourage you to take a page from the books of Caleb, Jenna, Sam, and Allie. Take time to think about making a sacrifice, either for religious reasons or for the sake of helping someone else and ask yourself why you are doing it. Will it help you grow closer to God? To your friend? To a stranger? All relationships take hard work and discipline as Jenna told me. I encourage you all to use this time until Easter Sunday to take a step for the sake of another. Let this Lent be a time we turn back to God and to those in need.