As we journey through Lent, let us reflect on its penitential practices. Penance is not an end in itself, but rather a help to recognizing the difference between “things of this passing world” and those “that eternally endure” (Preface II of Lent); a help to “raising up our minds,” so we may attain “virtue and its rewards” (Preface IV of Lent—the prayer at mass just before the “Holy Holy”). Virtue’s reward, promised by Scripture and affirmed by Pope Francis, is remarkable: a joy that “always endures” (Joy of the Gospel, 6; see Phil 4:4) and a “peace that passes
understanding” (Phil 4:7). The promise is so remarkable in fact that many people today call Christian faith naïve. Yet Scripture is called Revelation because it is a Truth beyond human comprehension, a Truth we could not have imagined without God’s Word, a Truth we grasp only by stepping out in faith to align our lives with it. Aligning our lives to Truth is the means by which we see (with eyes of the heart) the “eternal” meaning of “passing things” in our daily lives. Some “passing things” are of course “crosses”, even painful ones, whose “eternal meaning” is hard to recognize. The meaning of “The Cross” is the precise theme of the Liturgy over the next two weeks, as the Preface shifts tomorrow from that of Lent to that of the Passion. Let us enter this special time, then, with hearts and minds open to the miraculous graces God intends to give us. Fr. Tom