Don’t take Lent for granted

WE are now in the middle of Lent. For those who, by choice or circumstance, do not know anymore what Lent is, it is that liturgical season when Christian believers prepare for the greatest feast of the Christian faith.

The expected preparation is one of intense prayers and purification, involving fasting and abstinence, almsgiving and other works of mercy. It has a regimen that demands both spiritual and bodily discipline.

The idea is to make one fit to receive the tremendous grace our Lord pours
with his passion, death and resurrection on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. This is the paschal mystery that culminates and summarizes Christ’s redemptive work.

Lent is not supposed to be considered as one more period of the year with more or less some peculiar traits, but is really no different from other parts of the year. Such attitude exposes a believer to be actually a pagan.

Lent is meant to be a very good moment for conversion. It is meant to attain another transformation for both individuals and our society. Only the stubbornly self-righteous believe there is no such need.

This is specially so these days when sins and abuses in the different fields of our life are very evident. In business and politics, in the world of fashion and entertainment, even in family life, inhuman conditions are developing.

Scams and scandals abound, deception and greed now appear to be normal. In politics even the blind and deaf can now detect the ugly shenanigans of politicians and ideologues deprived even of the most indispensable common sense.

The Church has already issued and extensively developed the gospel-inspired social doctrine to guide us in our social life. But who’s studying it? Who’s trying to put this doctrine into practice?

Even high ecclesiastics violate it with impunity, making stupid comments dripping with hatred not only to their ilk but also to the public. Are we surprised why there’s so much moral disorder around? These ecclesiastics have to be rehabilitated.

The so-called heroes and heroines of the past are now showing their feet of
clay, doing political antics that betray more their attachment to their personal, family or class interests than their service for the common good.

There is so much commercialism and materialism around, continually fed and reinforced by the media. Not only goods are advertised. Even persons, as in stars and starlets, male and female, are shamelessly sold and traded and treated like commodities.

For this purpose, these unfortunate men and women are made to wallow in very inhuman conditions, though these may be sweetened by the false values of vanity, fame and some measure of wealth which is not really much in the first place.

Look at those large TV networks that together with legitimate news peddle rumors and gossips, trying their best to improve their ratings at the expense of destroying consciences, theirs and others’.

The people are evangelized with the gospel of purely earthly and temporal values. A dangerous culture is being formed posing an increasing spiritual and moral threat similar to the Southern Leyte disaster in the physical side.

The importance of prayer, of sacrifice and mortification, the need for humility and ascetical struggle, the pursuit of the common good are shut out.

The strengthening of the faith, feeding it with appropriate doctrine and virtues, is ignored and neglected.

Let’s not take Lent for granted. We have this yearly opportunity to cleanse and purify ourselves, regain our true bearings, and strengthen our life from within and then to the other aspects.

Let’s go back to God, let’s have another conversion. At least, we can expect the return of common sense and sanity to our life with these actions. But a lot more can be expected, because God is good, and very eager to forgive us.