In preparation for Lent

Lent starts tomorrow with Ash Wednesday and it's the season of the Church during which I struggle most with keeping it correctly. Feast days and seasons, as well as Ordinary Time, are easy enough, but Lent is hard for me. It's not hard because of what I give up, but rather because I'm working against my own attitudes for the season of penance. My problem is not that I see my Lenten sacrifices as too hard, but rather, not hard enough.

You see, I went to a Catholic high school and, as it was a small school, everything tended to be magnified. Lent was especially prone to displays of, shall we say, spiritual one-upsmanship. For instance, if I said I was giving up chocolate, the person next to me at lunch might respond that he or she was giving up chocolate and meat. And the person next to that person was only going to have a small loaf of bread that served as breakfast and lunch every day... on and on and on. It got to the point one year where a girl I knew gave up eating meat and taking hot showers and sleeping in her bed for Lent; it got to be ridiculous. When I got to college, I was no longer in that environment, but I still struggled to feel like my Lents were "good enough." We had had it drilled into our heads that we were supposed to "give God the maximum, not just minimal effort," so anything less than complete asceticism felt like it wasn't enough.

All the way through college, I struggled with this feeling of only doing Lent halfway; after all, I wasn't giving up all animal food-products or comforts like hot showers--wasn't I being a spiritual baby and taking the easy way out? But no more. This is the year that I deal with that attitude head on. Comparing myself with other people in this situation doesn't do anything but make me focus on the wrong things; it's not helpful for me to hear about what more Mary Sue is doing because then I start focusing on Mary Sue instead of on the cross.

So, this year, in addition to physical things I'm giving up, I'm giving up that attitude that says nothing I do is enough. My vocation is to be in the world, not to be totally ascetic, but I can offer up my little sacrifices with lots of love, following St. Therese of Lisieux's Little Way. Speaking of St. Therese, the following quote, from one of her letters, sums up my feelings perfectly:

"Sometimes, when I read spiritual treatises in which perfection is shown with a thousand obstacles, surrounded by a crowd of illusions, my poor little mind quickly tires. I close the learned book which is breaking my head and drying up my heart, and I take up Holy Scripture. Then all seems luminous to me; a single word uncovers for my soul infinite horizons; perfection seems simple; I see that it is enough to recognize one's nothingness and to abandon oneself, like a child, into God's arms. Leaving to great souls, to great minds, the beautiful books I cannot understand, I rejoice to be little because 'only children, and those who are like them, will be admitted to the heavenly banquet.'"