How will you be changed this Lent?

    Have you realized that Lent is one of the periods of the Christian calendar that goes by less noticed?
    One reason could be that Lent is not accompanied by a “marketing” campaign. Christmas comes with a whole campaign to buy gifts and Easter, to buy chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies.

    Other than Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, Lent is not generally the subject of much attention in the secular media. Today the church’s liturgical calendar is not taken into consideration at all by the general society, to the point that, in more than one occasion, we have seen major league baseball teams having to apologize for scheduling games on Good Friday, some even to start at the most dramatic time, 3 p.m. — the time of Christ’s death on the cross.
    But maybe, the deeper reason is that Lent is a time of conversion, and it is difficult for all of us to change.

    Of course it is not difficult to change superficially: to buy new clothes, to redecorate our houses or simply to change the old model of something for a new one. But usually what these superficial changes do is to validate the saying: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The fact is that the real changes, the ones that help our well-being, are normally not easy to make.

    St. Augustine wrote what we all experience as a fact of life: “Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts will be restless until they rest in you.” Lent is a time to recognize our hunger for God as well as the hunger of conversion that lies in the heart of each person, created in God’s image and likeness.

    Lent then is fundamentally a time of conversion: it is a time of penance and purification. The means offered by Christ through the church are not only external acts that we need to fulfill in order to be “good Catholics.” Let us recall that Jesus always condemned the Pharisees, not because they didn’t fulfill the law, but because they were attached only to the norm and not to the spirit sought by the law, which was the conversion of the human heart.

    Pope Benedict XVI reminded us about the real meaning of this time of the liturgical year in his first message for Lent: “Lent is a privileged time of interior pilgrimage toward him, who is the fount of mercy.     It is a pilgrimage in which he himself accompanies us through the desert of our poverty, sustaining us on our way toward the intense joy of Easter. Even in the ‘valley of darkness’ of which the psalmist speaks (Ps 23:4), while the tempter prompts us to despair or to place a vain hope in the work of our own hands, God is there to guard us and sustain us.”
    The Holy Father’s message is clear.

    First: during this privileged time of interior pilgrimage, let us not fall into the temptation to do nothing or to live Lent merely as a formality, following norms that don’t really change our hearts.
    Second: let us remember that “God is there to guard us and sustain us.” This is a time for us to walk with God; he is the one who desires our conversion, and for this reason he sustains us. Our conversion is not an exclusively human act. It is the work of God. Then we are filled with joy and peace, because we know that we are in his hands.
    The church suggests that we live penance, prayer and charity during this time.

    For us in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, with the occasion of the Jubilee Year of San Fernando Cathedral, it is a time of grace and renewal of the faith we received from our ancestors.
    It is a good time to receive God’s mercy in the sacrament of reconciliation and to take advantage of the indulgences granted by the Holy Father.
    It is a good time then, to live this privileged time of conversion.
    I will hold in prayer all the faithful of the archdiocese, so that when we finish Lent, the Lord may find us more like him.
    I wish all of you a blessed, peaceful and fruitful Lent.