Author: Sr. Kathryn J Hermes, FSP

I’ve been thinking about Lent. I always wait until little by little God helps me see what he wants of me. Giving up chocolate is both easy and difficult at the same time, and I tend to get wrapped up in the temptation of it all, which I think misses the point. I get wrapped up in a piece of candy, which means wrapped up in myself.

Instead I’m thinking of availability—radical availability to God who desires to give himself away to me at every instant. It’s radical focus on God, the absolute priority of God, a total relationship with him. And, at the same time, it is also radical availability to the other. Pope Francis in this Lenten Message for 2025 suggested we ask ourselves every day how our own life differs from that of an immigrant. This has captured my imagination, and for Lent I want to ask myself once a day how my life differs from someone who just lost their job, or, on another day, an immigrant, or someone fighting a war, or someone being persecuted for their faith, or someone living without clean water. I want to open my heart to the world and then do whatever he tells me. One day it might be to create a meal out of leftovers, another day to watch a youtube video of the stories of a particular group of people who are suffering and to offer a prayer, another day to skip a meal, another day to hold my tongue…. It is not so much about things I do, but to practice living from a different ground of being, the ground where God gives himself away to me, and I learn to give myself away also. The ground of true being, the true self, is love.

“There are two fundamental ways of being human in the world: trusting in our human resources and abilities or radically trusting in God. You cannot be grasped by or sustained in the deeper life in God—being like Jesus—until you are awakened at the deep levels of your being to this essential reality. It is the journey from living out one’s false self to living as our true self in Christ—a self that is deeply centered in and utterly abandoned to God.

The reality of the “false self”—this pervasive, deeply entrenched, self-referenced structure of being as the primary context of our spiritual journey—is one of the hardest things for us to acknowledge. We tend to think of the false self as a “surface phenomena” that can be treated by a few cosmetic alterations in our behavior. We are slow to accept the fact that our false self permeates all the way to the core of our being. It is hard to admit that we are profoundly habituated to a self-referenced way of being in the world that manifests itself in characteristics such as being fearful, protective, possessive, manipulative, destructive, self-promoting, indulgent, and making distinctions so as to separate ourselves from others.

Jesus makes the reality of the false self unmistakably clear when he says, “If anyone would come after me, they must deny themselves,” and, “Whoever loses their self for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:24-25). Jesus is not talking about giving up candy for Lent. He is calling for the abandonment of our entire, pervasive, deeply entrenched matrix of self-referenced being so we can enter into a life of loving union with God that manifests itself in Christlikeness.

This is a life of radical abandonment to God in love and equally radical availability to God for others so that in all circumstances and relationships our life becomes one in whom God is present for others.

The life hidden with Christ in God is one of such growing union with God in love that God’s presence becomes the context of our daily life, God’s purposes become the matrix of our activities, and the values of God’s kingdom shape our life and relationships; God’s living presence becomes the ground of our identity, the source of our meaning, the seat of our value and the center of our purpose. And that way of being in the world is life indeed!”

M. Robert Mulholland, Jr., excerpted from The Deeper Journey: The Spirituality of Discipleship

Right here at the threshold of Lent I want to get rid of the idea that it is up to me to convince God to love me. He is trying to convince ME to let him take over my heart and transform my desires and surrender myself entirely to his tender power.

“Give Me the joy of helping and transforming you. Surrender everything. Let yourself go. Tell Me often about your great longing. Do you think I could resist? That would be to misunderstand Me. If you are generous, how much more am I. You know the violent wind? The bird of prey? I too carry off. I am the Ravisher. Don’t struggle. And because you let yourself be taken captive, I’ll bring you into My secret garden among the flowers and fruit. You will wear the wedding ring on your finger. Your step will be in tune with Mine, and I’ll stoop down to your littleness so that we may talk together easily. How beautiful it will be like that My friend, My little soul.”

Jesus words to Gabrielle Bossis in He and I, page 60.

Image by Klaus Böhm from Pixabay

Sometimes we feel we’re slogging along in the spiritual life, trying to figure it out as we go along. First steps are important, and, perhaps, each day such first steps should be taken again….

“Our first lesson should be a realization of our incomplete and imperfect condition, and our first step should be toward Jesus, who is our consummation. In this search for Jesus, in this adherence to Jesus, in this continual and profound dependence upon Jesus, lie our life, our rest, our strength, and all our power of action. Never must we act except united with him, directed by him, and drawing life from him….”

Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle, founder and first general of the Congregation of the Oratory of Jesus Christ, quoted in The Whole Christ, by Emile Mersche, SJ