Mon Feb 20, 2023 – 10:26 am EST
(LifeSiteNews) — With the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday comes the familiar consideration of habit. What are we going to do for Lent this year? This can become a habit in itself, a conditioned response resulting in a reflexive embargo on chocolate. Yet it is a time best suited for the examination of the patterns which inform our personal traits. Some obvious, some subtle – each deserving the attentions of conscience for the potential for improvement.
The purpose of Lenten penance is to grow in virtue. What does this mean? Is it even possible to apply such a grand-sounding aim to your everyday routine? This seems an ambitious goal for the refusal to eat nice things. Perhaps it is. Perhaps there is a better way to do better, than to simply starve the craving for comfort food.
This is not to say that simple renunciation has no place in penance. I am thinking more of the need to return the focus of the practices of Lent to their purpose, rather than to criticize the measure of their severity. It offers 40 days in which to learn again
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