Make Lent Personal

Sunday, February 22, 2026

The season of Lent began this Wednesday past.  For many that means Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) was the day before.  For Catholics it is serious business.  Protestants, on the other hand, recognize it but do little about it.  It is a time of recalibration, and we should take advantage of it.

Here is how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops describes Lent:

Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday. It’s a period of preparation to celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection at Easter. During Lent, we seek the Lord in prayer by reading Sacred Scripture; we serve by giving alms; and we practice self-control through fasting. We are called not only to abstain from luxuries during Lent, but to a true inner conversion of heart as we seek to follow Christ’s will more faithfully. We recall the waters of baptism in which we were also baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ.

There is nothing particularly Catholic about that so I am not sure why Protestants eschew its practices to the extent they do – other than in a fit of pique to show they are not Catholic.  But then no one really wants to practice the self-denial that is incumbent in that definition – and therein lies the rub.  We live in an indulgent age when we view God as a source of blessing that would not deny us anything.  We ignore the fact that such denial might result in greater blessing than we could imagine.

Alternately, many use it as a time to focus on the world’s issues while refusing to acknowledge their own.  Many churches anymore, when they deign to speak of sin at all, speak of it as “out there” and in generalized terms.  Sin is not about something I as an individual do, but we can see its signs everywhere all around us.  Sadly whatever is being pointed to as a sign of sin never gets any better because no one is personally challenged to get better.

When I read that definition above, I hear a lot about the practice of Lenten sacrifice, but what really hits home is, “We recall the waters of baptism in which we were also baptized into Christ’s death, died to sin and evil, and began new life in Christ.”  I am reminded of Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

Fasting during Lent may be symbolic of that, but that verse runs much deeper.  We do not simply avoid sin – we die to it.  That’s gotta hurt, that’s gotta be painful and it for sure is not easy.  And maybe that is why we tend to deemphasize Lent, use it to point “out there” or reduce it to a set of vacant ritualistic practices.

Lent is intended to be personal, and not merely superficially sacrificial, but personally and painfully so.  We are dying to sin, to our old life, during Lent.  We will be resurrected with Jesus come Easter, but for now we are dying.

You want the world to be better?  Start with yourself.  Start with Lent.