Preparing For Lent

This last week I took my parents out to dinner to celebrate their birthdays.  I am immensely grateful to my mother and step-father for all that they have done to support me over the years.  They were always been there as I discerned the priesthood and have continued to aid me as a priest.  They even helped me with several things here at the parish!  Their marriage though did not come without its challenges.  Among other things, my parents deeply struggled to communicate at the beginning of marriage.  It was difficult as a child to understand why our family life was so chaotic.  Consequently, I believed that our situation of anger, disappointment, sadness, and isolation was just normal family life.  It wasn’t until my parents hit some imposing walls in their marriage, that they became convinced to do something about it.  A big game changer for them was attending a retreat together in Schuyler, NE at the St. Benedict Retreat Center.  They came away from the retreat with purpose for their marriage.  Things were still very difficult due to the years of bad family habits, yet they slowly began to make changes for the better.   Today, it has been 15 years since that retreat and my parents will be celebrating 25 years of marriage this coming September!

With Lent beginning, I wanted to share how suffering and trial can be a means of renewal in our lives.  Like a surgeon removing a growth that is impeding the health of the body, fasting and prayer are a means by which we give permission to God the Father to address the root of selfishness, fear, frustration, jealously, indifference, and so much more!  Ultimately, Lent is a time of struggle with ourselves and our disordered love of the world.  We receive this opportunity to hand over what I desire and put it into the loving hands of our creator.  As a note of practical advice, during Lent we engage in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  When it comes to fasting consider replacing whatever you “offer up” to God with some other good habit.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  So, if I take something out without replacing it we will only find ourselves back in the same place a few days or weeks later wondering, “What happened?”  I just finished the book The Anxious Generation and highly recommend it as a secular read for Lent.  I also recommend engaging a popular Catholic podcast such as Catholic Answers or Pints with Aquinas .   Consider putting aside technology in favor of more time outside, exploring, recreating, engaging with family, or simply practicing the virtue of listening.  If you fall, try again.  Christianity lived day by day, moment by moment.  We are not sprinting, but walking with Christ in this life toward Sainthood.  Are you ready?

May God bless you on your Lenten journey!

In Christ,

Fr. Luke Fleck