Lent is coming.

Or for many who are just getting to this on Wednesday, it is already here!

And there may be some who do not observe Lent.

Whatever the case may be, it has come. Who is giving up junkfood? *raises hand*

So many (including myself for many years) see Lent as a time to give something up, be it video games, junkfood, smoking, or they see it as a time to really crack down on exercise or making extra time for prayer. These are all really great things.

But since when was Lent basically the Christian New Year?

Lent has traditionally been a time of penance, when one is particularly mindful of their sinful nature and does their best to prepare themselves for the celebration of Easter. Giving up things like junkfood or drinking, as well as adopting a deeper practice and life of prayer, was seen as a discipline to help steel one against sinful tendancies and “make straight the way of the Lord” into a person’s heart, to receive Christ anew and in a deeper way on Easter. This has been my understanding at least (and Lord knows I am no historian!).

In the last few years, though, I’ve come to look at Lent a little differently. Now, I certainly don’t mean to belittle anyone for whatever their Lenten resolution might be, but I got to a point during novitiate when I wondered, “What the heck is the point?”

Seriously, how does giving up junkfood help me grow in my Christian life, if I’m just going to go to town on a pack of Peeps come Easter?

I would say, “It doesn’t.”

However, it can.

You see, Lent is not only a time to be mindful of one’s sinful ways and to take a few weeks to work on that, but it is a time when we consider Christ’s journey to the Cross. In the Catholic Church, all the Sunday readings start pointing toward Jerusalem, and we follow him week-by-week all the way to Palm Sunday, to the Triduum, the Cross. Lent, for me, is a stark reminder of Christ’s sacrifice, and all this focus on my sinfulness is like being taken out to eat at a very expensive restaurant and getting a peek at the bill before the other person graciously pays for the whole thing. You get that sinking feeling in your gut like, “Shouldn’t I be paying my share?”

But instead you are left sipping on the rest of your ice water while the other person stuffs a pile of bills into the little black wallet and pockets his copy of the receipt.

Lately in life I have come to see Lent as an opportunity to go to the cross with Jesus, suffering a little with him along the way. I find that you can give your Lenten resolutions a great deal of meaning if instead you offer them as sacrifices. So, whenever you are eating and someone asks, “Would you like dessert?” and you say, “No thank you,” because you gave sweet up for Lent, instead of thinking, “Phew, that was easy,” instead spend a moment in prayer and say something like, “Lord Jesus Christ, you have given up so much for me, more than I can ever repay. But I love you, and I want to repay you some how, so I offer you this small sacrifice in honor of and thanksgiving for the cross you bore and the death you suffered for my sake.”

If we offer our little penances as sacrifices, we offer ourselves as gifts to Jesus Christ, which is part of what being a Christian is all about.

This Lent, I challenge all of us (myself included!) to, instead of merely “doing without,” to “do with” a great deal of love. Let us try really hard (even if it is a sacrifice!) to love the other people in our lives as we ought, as our brothers and sisters, so that we don’t spend Lent focusing on what I am giving up, but instead reminding ourselves of what He has given for all. Let us walk with him all the way to Golgotha so that, the tears of Good Friday having dried, we may rise with him to greet that glorious Easter sun.

Jesus Christ has given us all so much; let’s try this Lent to give a little back.

Also, I would like to let you all know that I will not be on Xanga at all during Lent, not until Palm Sunday (April 5th). But I will be checking my email, so please, if there is anything you would like me to pray for during Lent, leave a comment and it will be emailed to me. You can come by any time during Lent and leave a comment, and I will bring your prayers into my own as soon as I see them. If they are personal, you can leave a comment asking me to message you, and I will get in touch as soon as I can. God bless all of you, and may your Lenten journey be with Christ!

Your brother in Him,

Jacob

I am heading home for the weekend, so I have to post this early since the effect will be utterly lost if posted after the fact!

Every St. Valentine’s Day since my freshman year of high school (1998-99) I have made it my mission to bring to those women who haven’t a Valentine some measure of gladness on what can be for some a very long and lonely day. In the last ten years, when the concept of a Valentine had been relevant (since up until that point girls were “yucky”), I have only twice had a Valentine: one was indeed my girlfriend, and one was a young lady I was courting. Being of very slender means, I was not really able to afford anything so extravagant as roses, chocolates, etc. So from afar in Wyoming I mailed my girlfriend a plastic rose (so it would not die en route), a chocolate bar, and a newly-composed poem now lost to time and her devices. This was all placed inside a cardboard poster tube and mailed across the frigid wastes of Nebraska, arriving safely at her door in Iowa.

The next year was quite different, in that I had no money even for such an economical endeavor as a plastic flower and Hershey’s chocolate. But the love I had for this woman whom I was courting was unlike any I’d experienced up until that point of my life, and I was easily moved to words. So instead of a dozen roses, I wrote within a week’s span fourteen poems, in recognition of Feb. 14th, and gave them to her, the chief poem among them being titled, “Poor Man’s Roses.”

Now that I am studying for the priesthood, I am obviously no more a-courting, as my vow of chastity solidifies my affections Elsewhere, though it permits me a freedom to love as I have never before known. My St. Valentine’s mission has not slackened in the least; in truth, I have come to know especially through Xanga that such genuine expressions of love are desperately needed in a world where truth, where love, where real acceptance for a person is so hard to find. So I write on, and every year I try posting a poem on my site for all of the women who might come across it. I offer these poems not for praise or for any kind of return, but chiefly for this: that all women, especially those who feel lost, rejected, unloved or in any other way laden with sorrow might know even in some small degree that they are beautiful, they are loved not only by me, but most of all by the God who created them, fashioning them in secret that he might make real for them his great and boundless love. Were God’s love an ocean, this poem and the love I offer you all through it would be but a particle of mist.

Here is this year’s poem, in all modesty. Please forgive any baseness, mediocrity, presumption or any other thing that might detract from the intention of the heart behind the pen. If you enjoy this, please recommend it to others. Should you stumble across someone on Xanga who feels alone and unloved this day, bring them here in the hopes that my few words might allow for them a brief moment of light on their cloudy day. God bless you all, in great abundance always.

Humbly yours this St. Valentine’s Day, Jacob

“The Truth of the Matter”

For St. Valentine’s Day 2009

What is night but sunless day,

that orb having gone her shattered way

‘til she gathers ‘gain each wayward star

and breaks the darkness with the dawn

of her face, the misty veil drawn

back as she ascends heaven’s stair?

So too my love, bedewed in sorrow,

take heart, for on the morrow

the shattered truth of thee assembles,

stitched with patience, men’d with tears,

with trials tempered o’er long years

‘til before thee all creation trembles.

For no creature, land or fine art,

no sight nor sound, no whole nor part

of anything can close compare

to the truth of thee, when ‘tis known

and the world’s lies be overgrown

with beauty’s flowers everywhere.

The truth, dear love, ‘tis quite plain;

I sing not a new verse, but a buried strain,

that thou art beautiful by birth.

Thy beauty is no measurement of flesh or bone;

these things be merely the lovely home

of a star betwixt heaven and earth.

This star, this radiant sun awaiting dawn,

when deception falls, its curtain drawn

lo! a light ‘fore which no shadow may stand!

Be free, love, of the world’s cloud of lies

that would paint thy flesh to please men’s eyes;

be woman, the glory of God’s hand!

Please lose no heart, and take no offense at the following question:

Who hasn’t a Valentine for the 14th?