The order of these forty days: 7QT XVI, seriatim.

f all that is miss­ing in my spir­i­tu­al life, the biggest void is order. My soul is a clut­ter­house. My prayers are unscrubbed, my con­fes­sions buried under a pile of sin, my spir­i­tu­al read­ing scat­tered far and yon, good inten­tions left to rust, and devo­tions lost and upturned amid the gen­er­al junk. Time for Lent.

II.

In 2013 I gave up blog­ging for Lent. I did not do that last year, and I am not going to do that this year. It was a real tri­al, to indulge the abil­i­ty to read online what mad peo­ple were say­ing, but then not have the abil­i­ty to write a post and say, “You know what? You’re mad.”

So none of that this year.

I do not yet know what I want to give up. Every time Ash Wednes­day approach­es again, I sense a vacant gap in the brain where I should know the right thing to sac­ri­fice for forty days. The gap tells me, every year, that I have no undue attach­ments, and that I should stop fool­ing myself. Maybe I’ll give up giv­ing things up.

III.

I believe that the right spir­i­tu­al devo­tion for Lent will find you each year. It’s wrong to wrack the mind or read four­teen sug­ges­tions from four­teen dif­fer­ent blog­gers to find the right one. Just look at that shelf of unread Catholic books (you do have one, don’t you?) and wait for one to leap out into your wait­ing hands. It will.

Yes­ter­day morn­ing I was search­ing my apart­ment in vain for the book I was sure I final­ly want­ed to read as my Lenten devo­tion­al: The Dolor­ous Pas­sion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Nope. Would­n’t be found. Has gone into hid­ing behind any of the numer­ous secret spaces that exist amid 10,000 books.

(Hav­ing as many books as I do aids a life of con­stant sur­prise. I am always bump­ing into titles I nev­er knew I had.)

I stared at a shelf and at once saw the right devo­tion­al read­ing for this Lent: Thomas Mer­ton­s’s No Man is an Island. It’s about time. It’s only been sit­ting there for 20 years.

IV.

I have nev­er real­ly under­stood why, when Moth­er Tere­sa’s writ­ings were pub­lished and we learned for how much of her life she felt the absence of God, peo­ple wailed that she nev­er real­ly was that won­der­ful saint the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion pre­sumed her to be.

Are you kid­ding?

To feel that dry, that long, and still do what you do every day, and still pray, and still say, “For love of Christ”: That is saint­hood. That is holi­ness.

I don’t do that. When I feel dry, I’m more apt to stop talk­ing to God alto­geth­er.

Which is why I need order in my spir­it and spir­i­tu­al exer­cis­es in my Lenten days.

V.

Lent is my favorite sea­son of the litur­gi­cal year. I nev­er under­stood why that should be until I became Catholic and acquired Catholic guilt.

Guilt is under­es­ti­mat­ed. The rea­son is because the world is delu­sion. Life and breath and things and joys are seduc­tive. Some peo­ple tell jokes all the time because it keeps them above the pain. But that does­n’t heal the pain, it just shuts it behind a door so that you can pre­tend it’s not there. Open that clos­et over­stuffed with wrong and guilt and it will like­ly crash on your head and knock you insen­si­ble.

But the con­tin­ued real­i­ty is our own sin. And to face real­i­ty, in weight and sor­row and ash, is to have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to final­ly turn joy real. Avoid­ance is not joy. You don’t go around Lent to get to East­er, you go through Lent; avoid­ance of Lent is not East­er, but Hell.

After 45 years, I know my sins well enough to know (1) that I keep com­mit­ting them; (2) that there­fore I keep return­ing every year to Lent; (3) that I can rejoice in God for giv­ing me Lent. It is the one litur­gi­cal sea­son I most need, so that I can have the one litur­gi­cal sea­son I most desire.

VI.

Real­ly, if I must give up any­thing this Lent, it is an atti­tude. It is right to feel sor­row over one’s fail­ures. It is anoth­er to feel sor­ry for one­self.

That is what I will give up. (Okay, and meat too. It’s a good dis­ci­pline.)

VII.

I often think the great­est gift that God can give to any­one is His absence.

That’s when we know we need Him. It makes us cry for Him.

 

Read more of this week’s quick takes at Con­ver­sion Diary.