It’s time for you either to sell your McDonald’s stock or put it in blind trust because once again they have seen the last of me till Easter Sunday. No more sausage biscuits and truth to tell I will miss them more than they will miss me. In my younger days, I used to play with “going without something for Lent” like I played with New Year’s Resolutions, that is to say that they both made it only for a few days before they were broken. However, as I became older I could see deeper meaning in observing Lent by some small penitential act which perhaps only served to me as a reminder of what Jesus spent for all of us. Lent can be a time for great grace, growth in the spiritual life, and focusing on perhaps the more important things in life.

Among those important things are preparing for the great Triduum now little more than six weeks away. Easter can be just another Sunday if one has not experienced the desert of temptations, the call to conversion of the Samaritan woman, and all those wonderful Gospel accounts which we shall soon be hearing once again. The Lenten Gospels in my life can not be heard and contemplated on enough for they get at the root of our Christian lives and graft us even closer to the crucified and risen one.

The Church attempts to provide us time during Lent to truly concentrate on the meaning in history and in this moment for us of these forty days. You probably either forgot about the abstinence which accompanies Ash Wednesday today and accidentally, I hope, ate meat or you substituted something else and missed meat (it is admittedly hard preaching this message to vegetarians!) But it is OK. Get in synch for this Friday and every Friday right through Good Friday. If it hurts a little, you are entering Lent. If it distracts a little, you have more time to think about the true sacrifice. We try hard as a  local diocese not to witness marriages during Lent because there would be a distraction of the first magnitude. I do not confirm during Lent, not because I am lazy, but again the possibility of our beloved Church offering yet another distraction. The Church wishes all of us, bishops as well as every member to do penance, turn away from sin and evil, and embrace the Gospel.

And out of these ashes of our personal lives and preparedness will rise the Savior of the World, hung on the “throne” of a wooden cross for all of us to witness how He loved us to death. So long McDonald’s, I’ll see you in early April. Hello, blessed Lord, help me a sinner to properly prepare for the reenactment of the sacrifice that puts my own and all of ours to shame. With you, as we sing, we fast and pray.

Blessed Lent everyone.

+RNL