After a season of some fasting and penances, I get on my scale, and it is just as I feared. My ego was roughly at the same weight. I thought perhaps that humility, like muscle, weighs more and that accounts for this. Unlikely.
Each Lent I go in with some expectations of not just seek detachment from materials things, but seeking more attachment to Jesus. Well really, I start off with more materialistic goals of “giving things up” and forgetting about gaining more of all that matters.
I came across this today from Rev. Fr. Peter T. Rohrbach’s book on St. Teresa of Avila, “Conversation with Christ.” From a chapter where he writes on meditation and gives examples.
My eye runs down the page, and I continue reading: “For a man does himself more harm if he seeks not Jesus, than the whole world and all his enemies could do.” … This is something of which I must convince myself and work into the very fabric of my life: that the most grave evil which could befall me is separation from You.
Once again, I was stuck on the process and not on the goal. Thus, setting myself up for disappointment in my Lenten disciplines. I slowly learn that perhaps the worst thing that could happen to me is if I was totally successful in these disciplines and thus attributed any success to my perseverance and effort.
“Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit”, “Man proposes, but God disposes.”, The Imitation of Christ, Book I, Chapter 19.
So “Yeah!” on my failure to “Lent” as I would want. It is impossible to take a selfie snapshot of your own interior life and understand everything going on. Do I love God and others more? I hope so. I at least desire it. Even progress on a glacier scale is progress.
