Lent in Practice: Risen with Christ

The flyer gains new confidence with each experience in the air. Every trip bears him higher and higher, finding his element more and more in the great spaces of the universe. His horizon is boundless, the firmament is his home.

So too with us. If we "be risen with Christ" we will "seek the things that are above." Lent will not have been an interlude, an episode, but rather a trial trip in which we have gained experience and confidence for greater flights. We have tasted the fruits as well as the fears of penance. We will not hestitate as before to leave earth behind and rise, borne on the strong winds of grace, into the boundless spaces of God. Not that we deny difficulties and dangers. We know only too well that the lightest carelessness of self-confidence will dash us to earth, perhaps fatally. Our confidence rests in the powerful means of God's grace. We soar on the merits of Christ, not our own. The strong winds of prayer and humility bear us up where the Spirit bloweth and carries us where It will. We are at home with God: "the Lord is our firmament."

This is the meaning of Lent in practice: the following of our Lord Jesus Christ into the desert and up to Calvary, the welding of our wills to His in the mastery of love. Then will the Resurrection dawn find us at His feet crying joyously: "Rabboni."

- text from Lent in Practice: The Spirit of Penance, by Father John J Burke, C.S.P.; printed by "The Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle in the State of New York"