The Power of Sacrifice

We typically associate the season of Lent with darkness and difficulty. It can be hard to give something up or take up a new sacrifice, and it can take a lot of effort to stay diligent and faithful to our commitment. On Ash Wednesday, forty days can feel like a long time to embrace suffering and perhaps even pain.  Even our church parishes are often sparsely decorated to make it feel more like a desert when we come to Mass. 

Instead of this difficult and pessimistic approach to beginning this holy season, I would like to propose another way to look at Lent and the many different penances we take up during this time. Rather than pointless suffering, we can see it as an opportunity to love more fully and to grow closer to Jesus and the particular way that He loves us.  Lent is above all a time of preparation for Holy Week and the Holy Triduum, where we commemorate the greatest acts of love that have ever occurred.  In St. John’s Gospel, he relates that Jesus loved us “to the end” (John 13:1).  Jesus suffered and died because His love for us knew no limits.  He wanted to show us deep closeness in our inevitable suffering by choosing to suffer Himself.  In this light, Lent can be a time to unite ourselves to Jesus particularly through the gift of suffering and sacrifice.

It might be hard to think of these realities of suffering and sacrifice as a gift.  When we experience them in our lives, we usually want them to end as quickly as possible so that we can move on to happier things.  But when we can begin to see Jesus’ presence amid suffering, it begins to take on a new meaning.  The reason we want suffering to end is that we often feel alone and hopeless in the pain we experience.  Yet when I begin to see the suffering face of Jesus present with me, I can have hope that I am not alone.  He who loves me “to the end” is always with me.

In this way, Lenten sacrifices, rather than being empty experiences of pain, become meaningful encounters with Jesus.  Lent can bring the miracle of renewed life into our own souls as we experience the conversion that is motivated by the Holy Spirit’s action within us.  Slowly but surely, our hearts are changed, “converted” in the literal sense of the word.  The Greek work for conversion is “metanoia,” which means a change in direction, a change in the way that we think, a change in the direction where we are looking.  When I see Lent, and the suffering that can accompany it, as a time to be close to Jesus who suffered so much for me, it begins to change the way that I look at the experiences of my life.  Slowly but surely, everything that happens is seen through the lens of Christ with me – rejoicing with me, suffering with me, being with me in everything.
 
As we remain faithful to this, our lives become reoriented so that everything is now directed toward Jesus.  And by His grace working in me, it gives my love a new power because it becomes like His love – a love that suffers with, a love that redeems.  We become so close to Jesus that it is not our own love but His love that radiates from us.  And this call is not reserved for select few.  It is the call of us all.  It is this total conversion and this redemptive love that will bring renewal to a world that stands in great need of it.  Changing the world begins with one simple act of kindness, one sacrifice offered to Jesus.  May this holy season be an opportunity for all of us to stand with Jesus in His suffering and let that suffering bring redemption and love to our parishes, our families, and our own lives.