Giving Up or Growing Up?

“What are you giving up for lent?” Is a habitual question Christians encounter during the season of Lent!

Now I ask you:

“Really, what are you going to give up this time?

Or do you want to grow up?”

Perhaps it is a good idea to start by reflecting on the following verse:

“Return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful”. (Joel 2:12).

The prophet Joel’s invitation becomes very relevant and timely during this season of Lent. The invitation to render our hearts to the Lord may seem like an impossibility because we live in a time in which we are compelled to live lives filled with the demands of earthly survival. However, this is exactly what Lent is meant to help us achieve.

Lent is a time of intentional self-examination of conscience.

A time of internal purification without any external pressure. A time to administer self-motivated penalties for our failures. It is also a time to return to the Lord to make our lives beautiful. We sometimes forget that without God we are nothing. Ash Wednesday reminds us that without God, we are just a pile of dust. However, we are a pile of dust that is beloved by our Creator so we must respond to that love by giving up what keeps us from Him and ultimately growing up as well.

With King David, let us pray the Psalm of Repentance:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love

According to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment. Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.

…Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

(Psalm: 51)

May this season of Lent be a time of growing more and more closer to the Lord,

Fr. James Cherickal

Pastor