Yesterday on our radio program, Women of Grace® Live, I recommended two resources for Lent _– In Conversation with God, Volume 2 by Francis Fernandez; and Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, OCD. Today, I followed my own advice and prayerfully read the selections for Ash Wednesday. Both were excellent. But it was one line in Section 2 of In Conversation with God that grabbed me.
Father Fernandez quotes a passage from St. Josemarie Escriva’s work, Christ is Passing By. In it, the Saint is teaching on the spiritual practice of mortification. He writes:
And the best mortification is that which overcomes the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life in little things throughout the day. Ours should be mortifications which do not mortify others, and which give us more ‘finesse’, more understanding and more openness in our dealings with everybody…
It was that one line – Ours should be mortifications which do not mortify others – that really caught my attention. Isn’t it the truth! It is the attitude of heart and the way in which we live it that provides the real spiritual muster in our Lenten sacrifice.
Sometimes we mortify the senses, but not the interior passions. Grouchiness, irritability, impatience, or frustration experienced in the midst of sacrificial offering may well be the very thing God is asking us to sacrifice. It does no good to give up chocolate, sweets, meat, smoking, soda, or a whole host of other enjoyments, and brood over it for the next forty days! Remember what it says in 2 Corinthians 9: 7: God loves a cheerful giver. What marks the demeanor of our Lenten offering? How do others experience it? Perhaps the exterior mortification is only a means to see what really needs to be put to death inside of us.
The quote from St. Josemaria continues:
You are not mortified if you are touchy; if every thought is for yourself; if you humiliate others; if you do not know how to give up what is unnecessary and, at times what is necessary; if you become gloomy because things don’t turn out the way you had hoped. On the other hand, you can be sure you are mortified if you know how to make yourself ‘all things to all men, in order to save all’ (1 Cor. 9:22).
As I said in my last blog on Lent – it isn’t so much about giving up as it is about giving in – giving in to the grace we truly need to be conformed more nearly to the will of God. May Easter Sunday find us more fully converted than we are now.
Blessed Ash Wednesday!
