The Lenten Journey Begins Tomorrow
The Journey of Lent Begins Tomorrow
During Lent, the words: prayer, fasting, almsdeeds, […] often reach our ears.
We are accustomed to think of them as pious and good works, which every Christian must carry out particularly in this period. This way of thinking is correct, but not complete. Prayer, almsdeeds and fasting need to be understood more deeply, if we want to integrate them more thoroughly into our lives and not to consider them just as passing practices which demand only something momentary from us or deprive us of something only momentarily. With this way of thinking we would not yet arrive at the real meaning and the real power that prayer, fasting, and almsdeeds have in the process of conversion to God and of our spiritual development. One keeps pace with the other: we mature spiritually by being converted to God, and conversion takes place by means of prayer, as also by means of fasting and almsdeeds, adequately understood.
It should perhaps be said at once that it is not a question here only of momentary "practices", but of constant attitudes which give our conversion to God a lasting form. Lent, as liturgical time, lasts only forty days a year: we must, on the other hand, strain always towards God; this means that it is necessary to be continually converted.
Lent must leave a strong and lasting mark on our lives. It must renew in us awareness of our union with Jesus Christ, who makes us see the necessity of conversion and indicates to us the ways to reach it. Prayer, fasting, and almsdeeds are precisely the ways that Christ indicated to us.
Pope John Paul II