Why Lent Is My Favorite Liturgical Season
“The concern of the flesh is death, but the concern of the spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6).
Editor’s note: This Lent, the Catholic Women in Business team is exploring the theme “Cultivating Virtue in the Desert.” Learn more here.
Lent is my favorite Liturgical season—a period of preparation, reparation, and consecration. It’s like a spiritual bootcamp, where offering penance and taking time to contemplate God are key. I am humbled with the thought that I am joining many Catholics to practice self-denial and mortification during these 40 days.
Here are five reasons Lent is my favorite Liturgical season.
1. The Dietary Restrictions
Lent’s dietary restrictions are challenging—yet heartening. All Catholics abstain from meat and fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and abstain from meat not only during Fridays of Lent but throughout the year. (In the U.S., we may choose another form of penance on Fridays outside of Lent.)
For the past year, I’ve abstained from meat on Fridays. I’ve found that this practice strengthens my self-control, especially as Fridays signal the start of the weekend and are often days to celebrate with co-workers. Fasting is also a sacrifice that encourages the delay of gratification and the suppression of urges.
2. The Time for God
Lent asks us to devote more of our precious time to God. It is an excellent time for mental prayer and for reading Scripture, especially using Lectio Divina, a slow and methodical approach to understanding the word of God. During the pandemic, my family and I have been praying the Stations of the Cross at home, using illustrated prayer cards. This year, we will visit our parish and walk all 14 stations as we pray and visualize Christ’s suffering. I also pray various chaplets, such as the Seven Sorrows of Mary, which reminds me of the sacrifices that Mother Mary endured during Jesus’ life.
3. The Disruption of Routine
Lent is a period of self-discipline, simplicity, and the disruption of secular routines. My family is connected to the Internet regularly for school, work, and pleasure. I impose a strict no-Internet rule during Holy Week, when we disconnect from all the social hullabaloo and engage only in non-digital activities.
What will you give up for 40 days? I’ve given up social media and online shopping in the past. Each year is different, and Lent is a great reminder of the virtue of temperance.
4. The Focus on Charity
Lent is an opportunity to give more to charity. Almsgiving is an integral part of Lent that reminds me that temporal goods are not an end but a means. Sharing what I have with others without receiving anything in return helps to reduce the pleasure I experience from material things and the desire for more things that do not contribute to my well-being.
5. Reconciliation and the Eucharist
Lent is the perfect time to reconcile with God and to receive the Holy Eucharist. According to the precepts of the Catholic Church, at a minimum, Catholics must receive Holy Communion during the Easter season. To do so, we must not be in a state of mortal sin. Many priests make themselves even more available to Catholics during Lent to hear our confessions.
Not many people will say that Lent is their favorite Liturgical season, because sacrifice and fasting are not easy or fun. However, subjecting ourselves to them helps to temper our inclinations in order to realign ourselves with what God intends for us: to be in harmony with others and to glorify him.
Andrienne Cruz is a former writer for a community newspaper in Manila, Philippines and is currently a librarian in Los Angeles County. She loves to read and regularly writes book reviews, but is looking forward to writing essays and feature articles with a strong Catholic perspective. She works part-time and is mostly a stay at home mom to two school-aged kids.