Reflection
If penance is all that Lent is about, the season, if not almost useless, is at least somewhat trivial. Lent is a much greater moment in life than that. Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now. Lent is a summons to live anew. The first challenge of Lent is to open ourselves to life. Lent is the time to let life in again, to rebuild the worlds we’ve allowed to go sterile, to “fast and weep and mourn” for the goods we’ve foregone. If our own lives are not to die from lack of nourishment, we must sacrifice the pride or the sloth or the listlessness that blocks us from beginning again. Then God will pour into our hearts the life we know down deep that we are lacking,
from A Summons to Live Anew: Lent 2024, by Joan Chittister
Prayer
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
Isaiah 43:19
Action
Are there blocks in your life? Where do you need to begin again?
Suggested Reading
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
Ezekiel 36:26
God’s love is not weighed in the balance of our human calculations, but unstintingly gives us the courage to start anew. This teaches us resilience, the courage always to start again each day.
Pope Francis
Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.
Meister Eckhart
Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction. Germany Kent
We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
Joseph Campbell
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call ‘failure’ is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford
What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
Lao Tzu
The beginning is always today.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley