Lent For Losers

When I was around seventeen years old, I was competing in a multi-day stage bicycle race. I was a fairly competitive cyclist as a junior, but I'll never forget cresting one particularly grueling climb and seeing my dad on the sidelines. I pulled over briefly and told him I was having a heck of a time staying motivated to push through, both in this race and my cycling career in general. "Well, if it's too hard, you can always just quit," my dad told me reassuringly, or something to that effect. That was all the invitation I needed. We went home together that day, and the relief I felt washed over me like an ocean. 

I love my dad and how he is always there for me, like the father of the prodigal son. But my wife and I joke about that formative scene in my youth and how it set the stage for future folds. "Well, if it's too hard, just quit," we often joke in various scenarios we encounter. It's funny but kind of embarrassing as well. I want my kids to know they're loved and supported, but I don't want my kids to be quitters necessarily.  

I've noticed some of the greatest "achievers" in life were those who got the least affirmation when young. Elon Musk as one example has this kind of super-human ability to create and execute, but like many top-level achievers, I suspect it comes from a father-hole or a need to compensate or prove someone wrong. When Musk returned home after being hospitalised, his father Errol Musk berated him for getting beaten up by bullies. Errol Musk called his son a “loser” and took the side of the bully who beat him up. We all have those instances from our adolescence that shape us, for better or worse. 

I've written before that I believe the character trait of stubbornness will greatly aid a Christian in his spiritual life, especially were should he be faced with martyrdom. I'm not a stubborn person; I cede easily, so it's something I need to learn or develop. One inspiring saint in this regard is St. Eulalia, who was born in the 3rd century in Spain. At twelve years old, stubborn and bull-headed, she would sneak out of her parent's house in the middle of the night in search of pagans to defy. She would spit at their idols and defy their threats of torture in order to gain the red crown. Or St. Crispina, who refused to sacrifice to idols, was called stubborn and insolent by the proconsul, and was martyred.

One of my favorite modern disciples (hopefully on the path to sainthood) is Fr. Walter Ciszek, who grew up in the hard-scrabble coal country of Pennsylvania and had a tough-as-nails character. This character would serve him well as a priest. However, when he joined the Jesuits and found himself in a Siberian prison after sneaking into Russia to minister to Catholics there, he similarly learned a lesson in relying on his own strength when he was put to the test. From WAU:

"Initially, Fr. Ciszek wasn’t too worried. He was innocent, after all. And he had "a great deal of confidence" in his ability to stand firm against any interrogator.

His strength, discipline, and habits of prayer certainly helped. But Lubianka wore him down with its constant hunger and isolation and the all-night interrogations, with their mind games and agonizing afterthoughts. After a year—brutalized, drugged, threatened with death—Ciszek did what he had been sure he would never do: He signed papers that gave the impression he had been spying for the Vatican.

Afterward, burning with shame and guilt for being "nowhere near the man I thought I was," he finally faced the truth.

'I had asked for God’s help but had really believed in my ability to avoid evil and to meet every challenge. . . . I had been thanking God all the while that I was not like the rest of men. . . . I had relied almost completely on myself in this most critical test—and I had failed.'

The interrogations continued, and Ciszek fell into black despair. Terrified, he threw himself on God, pleading his utter helplessness. Then, in a moment of blinding light, he was able to see "the grace God had been offering me all my life."

'I knew that I must abandon myself completely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God. And I did it. I can only describe the experience as a sense of "letting go," giving over totally my last effort or even any will to guide the reins of my own life. It is all too simply said, yet that one decision has affected every subsequent moment of my life. I have to call it a conversion. . . . It was at once a death and a resurrection.'

We are now entering into Holy Week on the eve of Palm Sunday, it is no accident that we see the weakness of the flesh highlighted in Matthew's Gospel. If you are like me, you find strong affinity with St. Peter in the courtyard, who of course was just prior to his thrice denial of Christ was brazenly cutting off the ear of those who opposed him in the garden. This has not been an especially fruitful Lent for me--I'm not necessarily failing spectacularly, but I am certainly eating crow in "adjusting" my various personal Lenten observances--quite frankly, because I found them too demanding. Like my father at the bike race, we lovingly reassure ourselves all is well and all is well and all will be well, while we quietly slip out of our hair shirts a few weeks early and go off in search of some soft foods. "I will die (to self) with you!" we proudly profess on Ash Wednesday. When Palm Sunday comes, we self-consciously look around to see who heard us.

One of the most disconcerting parts of lost opportunity when your Lent is more or less a failure is that we fail in loving God more. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God" (Ps 42:1) David waxes. Isn't this the purpose of our observances of the three Lenten pillars--to intensify that longing, that panting for God: in our prayer, in our hunger, and in the poor? 

But even when we have cut corners left and right, we can still finish strong. We should recognize, however, when it comes to the grace of final perseverance at our death, this is complete grace and depends nothing on our merit--even that merit we pride ourselves of obtaining during these sacrificial periods of penance and testing.

What happens when you miserably fail that test? You throw yourself on the mercy of grace, since this is what your salvation depends upon. We don't obtain perseverance through the will alone, but as St. Alphonsus notes, "All those who are in heaven are there for this one reason: They prayed, they asked for perseverance. All those who are in hell are there for this one reason: They did not pray and they did not ask the Lord for the grace of final perseverance." If nothing else, it reminds us that we do not save ourselves of our own merits, and how truly weak we are--helpless without grace.

If you're like me, you are salvaging what's remaining of your Lent to try to finish strong, while realizing it's all a kind of child's play compared to what our Lord endured in his Passion: our little successes, our massive fails, our meager penances, all the while accompanied by complaining and rationalizations for the slightest of discomforts. But we must remember that our Lord never held Peter's sin of denial over his head: it was a setback but not the sum of his discipleship, and one Peter never forgot either since it was the antidote to his brazen bravado.  

If you're having an excellent and fruitful Lent, I commend you; give thanks to God for the grace. If you're like me and having a less-than-stellar month of lost opportunity full of lackluster prayer and feeble fasts, I feel you. Let's try to recognize that in our Christian faith, we do not earn the love of the Father through our works and accomplishments--it is freely given and freely received, an unmerited grace. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push ourselves to pray more, fast more, give more....but even when you haven't, God doesn't love you any less. If anything, he is close to the brokenhearted and rich in mercy for the weak and helpless.

You may have bitten off more than you can chew a month ago, but you still have a week before the darkness-turned-dawn of Easter. Recommit yourself to the Lord, as the just man falls seven times and rises again (Prov 24:16).  Embrace your failures because they are your teacher--teaching you not to rely on your own merits, but on grace. And give yourself a little grace too--if you ate the chocolate or the burger or whatever. You're not a loser, just a human being. God still loves you. He forgives you, runs out to meet you and interrupts your rehearsed script to throw a robe and ring on you. He wants you to die with him, and die well, so that you may live. Final perseverance does not depend on you, but rests with a very competent and loving God who wants to shower you with that grace. 

Let him.