Each year in Lent we focus specifically on turning away from our sins and back to the Lord. If there is a certain sin that you have been struggling with, something that you notice yourself falling into on a regular basis, now is the time to make some progress on it.
On the First Sunday of Lent, the gospel tells of Jesus entering into the desert to pray, fast and to do combat with the devil. Now is our time to follow Jesus into the desert to do combat with those habitual sins.
- The first step in this battle with our sins is to pray and ask God for the grace and strength to conquer them.
- The second is to fast as an act of sacrifice of love to our Lord.
- Fasting also helps us to be open to God’s grace by making us realize our dependence on God and not on the passing physical comforts of food. Another type of fasting that will definitely make a difference is fasting from technology. Things like social media, news, sports, online shopping, music…etc. only provide us with distractions from focusing on the deeper things of the interior life. In order to be aware of certain sins or the root cause of certain sins we need to go deeper by entering into silence with Our Lord.
- The last thing in making progress in doing combat with our sins is to make a plan and take concrete, practical steps to not commit those sins in the future. God will supply the necessary grace to be freed from those sins but we need to be open to those graces by working to live lives of virtue and free ourselves from those habitual sins, those vices.
Don’t waste this Lent! Let it be a time of true conversion, a time of turning more fully to God by working to be more faithful to Him and love Him all the more.
Fr. Jacquemin
