Lent for the busy professional

Ash Wednesday often arrives before one is fully prepared for the penitential season of Lent and catches us off guard, especially when it comes earlier than usual — as it does in 2024, coinciding with Valentine’s Day on February 14. 

For those who lead busy and involved lives, such as business leaders, getting mentally ready for Lent and starting the season with the proper disposition can be especially challenging. But even simple traditional practices can help one enter into the spirit, and a basic turn of one’s attention can reorient one’s heart along the proper journey of Lenten conversion in anticipation of Holy Week and Easter Sunday. 

THREE PILLARS

Focusing on Christ’s great sacrifice and our need of repentance is a core component of our Lenten journey. 

Father James Misko, chaplain of Legatus’ Austin Chapter, said our lived Catholic experience should look different with any change in the liturgical season. The liturgy itself reflects this in its change of rubrics and aesthetics, such as décor and liturgical music. 

It’s an intentional reminder to “begin again” or “re-engage” our spiritual journey, which may have lost focus in one way or another, he said.

“In Lent, we engage things like fasting, almsgiving, and prayer, the three traditional pillars of a holy Lent that require physical participation,” said Misko, who also serves as vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Diocese of Austin. “Saint Teresa of Kolkata was famous for saying that we fast so that there will be space in us for God. Fasting is not a sentimental exercise. It is physical.” 

In addition to well-documented health benefits, fasting also recognizes our desire to be satisfied. As Misko explained, our physical want to be satisfied cultivates our awareness of our ever-present hunger to be filled with God, a desire expressed in the book of Job: “My inmost being is consumed with longing” (19:27, NAB).

Lent, he stressed, calls us to physically fast so as to recognize the hunger beneath the hunger for God.

A TIMELY RETREAT

Lent is also the annual retreat to which the Lord and His Church invite us every year, said Fr. Marcel Taillon, founding chaplain of the Providence Chapter.

“None of us is holy enough yet, so we need this annual time for self-reflection, repentance and renewal,” said Taillon, a popular Catholic radio host and pastor of St. Thomas More Parish in Narragansett, RI. 

In this year of the National Eucharistic Revival, Taillon said, Lent provides a perfect storm of grace to deepen our devotion, intimacy, and encounter with the Eucharist. He suggests that even the busiest of us can benefit greatly from committing to a short period of preparation before Mass.

“Read the Scriptures before Sunday or daily Mass, especially the Gospel, and pray with it before Sunday or daily Mass,” Taillon urged Legatus members. “You can also read a book on the Eucharist and pray a litany of the Eucharist, or attend adoration and pray for vocations to the priesthood — because without our priests, we cannot have the Eucharist.”

Misko also affirmed the Lenten focus on the Eucharist. He said the verse from Job about being “consumed with longing” foreshadows a profound eucharistic spiritualty.

“It is quite interesting that he uses the word ‘consumed’ to describe the condition of his soul,” Misko said. “In the Eucharist, we consume the Body of Christ, and in doing so, as teaches St. Augustine, we become what we consume.” 

We come to know God by being intimate with God, he explained. 

“In the Eucharist there is an effect in us, not an effect put upon us,” he said. “Every time we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we consume God’s very being, and so our being and His being make contact. Holy Communion is not a symbol. It is not sentimental. It is not just a good idea. It is a physical connection with God’s real presence.”

A TIME FOR HEALING

Lent is also a time of reconciliation and healing — something everyone regularly needs. And as the words of the Lord’s Prayer suggest, one’s own forgiveness and healing begins with forgiving others.

“Jesus wants to heal us personally in our mind, heart, and soul throughout our lives. Lent is a special time for a heightened awareness of this,” said Taillon. “We should enter into prayer with the Lord so we can receive His love in a more receptive prayer stance.” 

Becoming more receptive to God’s healing grace during Lent may mean taking steps to forgive or reconcile with those who have hurt us or are distant from us — small mindful acts that can give one’s Lenten conversion a jump-start. 

“Perhaps write a note or have a Mass offered for those we struggle to love as Christ has called us,” Taillon said. “Lent is the season of healing.”

LENTEN ABANDONMENT

Lent is about recognizing one’s utter dependence on God. Both Fr. Marcel Taillon and Fr. James Misko suggest St. Charles de Foucauld’s prayer of abandonment as an excellent Lenten devotion:

Father, I abandon myself into your hands; to do with me what you will. Whatever you may do, I thank you: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul. I offer it to you with all the love of my heart, for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into your hands without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for you are my Father. Amen.