The photo above captures a special moment. We are standing outside our parish, Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, at the opening of the Jubilee Year 2025. It was an exceptional moment. It reminded me that we are always on pilgrimage toward God. The next Jubilee will be in 25 years and my kids will be adults by then!

NO WATER IN LENT?

During my upbringing in the faith, Lent meant that the fonts had no water in them. The fonts were filled with sand. It was this sense of waiting for water to bursts anew at the Easter Vigil. I later learned that might not be the best approach.

There is always water in the desert. It is hidden, but it is there.

We need water during Lent. We need to touch blessed water and cross ourselves as we come to worship God. We need to be reminded of our baptism as we journey with those preparing to be baptized. We are all on pilgrimage together.

Pilgrimage. That is a fitting word at the start of Lent. We are constantly moving toward God. We are always going together to meet him.

Saint Benedict tells us that the life of a monk “must be a continuous Lent” (49:1). This can be applied to Benedictine oblates and all Christians.

To have a continuous Lent is to constantly die to ourselves so that Christ can live in us. To have Lent before us is to be people on pilgrimage. We pick up where we lack in our spiritual life. We go to the interior desert to find new spiritual vigor!

Our focus during these forty days is “to keep this manner of life most pure” (49:3). We must do four things for Christ. First, we must work. Second, we must pray with tears. Third, we must read. Finally, have compunction of heart.

We must work. Work prevents us from idle time. Saint Benedict says, “Idleness is the enemy of the soul” (48:1). Idle time welcomes temptation. What defines our Benedictine heart is our ability to work. Work expresses our relationship with the world around us. Work expresses our relationship with God. Our work is an offering of praise to God. It is liturgy of work. Benedict says, “When they live by the labor of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, they are really monks” (48:8-9).

Tears are a gift from God. Tears suggests a frankness with God in our prayer life. We must engage prayer with sincere honesty before our loving God.

We must read. Benedict tells us that during this time of Lent each one is to receive a book from the library. Each person is to read the whole of it straight through (48:15). In this spirit, I recommend four books for the season here.

Finally, compunction of heart. The Prayer Over the People in today’s liturgy of Ash Wednesday carries a provocative line:

“Pour out a spirit of compunction, O God, on those who bow before your majesty, and by your mercy may they merit the rewards you promise to those who do penance. Amen.”

Compunction. A word not commonly used in English, but one that carries a weighty significance.

Its Latin root, compunctio, denotes a sharp, intense prick. I expounded on this idea of compunction in an earlier post here.

Compunction suggests holy sorrow, which comes from an awareness that we have turned away from God. Compunction is an unfiltered and brutally honest examination of our lives. This examination evokes an emotion within the depths of our being. It evokes a return to God, to console Christ, and to not be obsessed with ourselves. In his encyclical Dilexit nos, the Holy Father talked about compunction:

“The natural desire to console Christ, which begins with our sorrow in contemplating what he endured for us, grows with the honest acknowledgment of our bad habits, compulsions, attachments, weak faith, vain goals and, together with our actual sins, the failure of our hearts to respond to the Lord’s love and his plan for our lives. This experience proves purifying, for love needs the purification of tears that, in the end, leave us more desirous of God and less obsessed with ourselves” (158).

Lent is here! Lent is here whether we are ready for it or not. Let our hearts be ready to accept the Lent we are given. Enlarge my heart as we are plunged into this holy season.