Entrustment To Mary= A "Good" Lent

So here we are - we have made the journey through Lent and are ready to rejoice and sing Alleluia to our resurrected Lord. As most of my Lenten seasons go, I tried to carry out my sacrifices on my own, which led me to see a lot of my misery and come once again to the same conclusion that I can do nothing without Jesus - my Savior.

This year it was interesting how I was handed two temptations in the realm of my chosen fasting foods and on both occasions I failed - at least in the world's eyes. First, when I ordered a taco from a food cart I asked the server not to give me the chips that came with the meal. When my dinner basket arrived it included the chips. I looked at them as a special gift from God, and started to munch away. Then when I contemplated what had happened, I realized it could have been a good opportunity for me to ask Jesus to help me refrain from eating them.

Second, a patient's wife bought for me a big delicious looking peanut-butter cookie. Not wanting to hurt her feelings by refusing it, I gobbled it up. Then I reflected on how much I worry about offending humans over offending my God. Surprisingly for me, in both instances, with grace, I did not walk away sad, which usually my bruised pride prompts me to do. But instead, with my Blessed Mother, WE asked for mercy on my self-centered soul, and thanked God for his unconditional love.

So, I can say this was a good Lent. Through numerous humiliations, God trusted me to see my weaknesses and gave me the grace not to run away like this Scaredy Cat normally would do. With God's grace along with my entrustment to the Blessed Mother, a small crack has formed in my hardened heart, allowing Divine Mercy rays to penetrate through in order to rescue me. Yes, this was a very good Lent indeed!

If at least a fissure appears in the armor of your distrust, then God, Who is always fighting for you, will try to take advantage of it. He will use this fissure to build an entry way into your firmly fortified world. Your egotistical reign is closed before God because you continually fear that He will diminish the reign of your I and that He will limit your lordship. That is why even the existence of the smallest Divine fissure is important because it can eventually be enlarged so that there will be more and more space in you for the light of Divine grace that saves you. [1]

For the time being, the light is faint. Even this faint light, however, shows us certain fragments of the truth - the truth about ourselves in relationship to God, to ourselves, and to the world. Even though amid shadows one cannot see much, this experience is already shocking and painful. In one's gradual discovery of the difficult truth about himself, one can see God's great gentleness and love for the soul that could otherwise become terrified and rebel. God trusts that we will not run away from this light, but rather accept it as a gift. This gift is difficult to receive, but God must give such a gift in order to rescue the beloved soul from the unconscious lie in which it is living. When we begin to see the truth about ourselves in the Divine light, we will also begin to understand that the perfection, which was the source of our self-satisfaction, was an illusion. [2]

[1] S.C. Biela, Behold I Stand at the Door and Knock, (Ft. Collins, CO: IAMF, 2005), 11.

[2] Ibid, 9.