“Do not let the way your prayer and penance feel right now discourage you.”
There are some years when I feel like I “do” Lent really well. I stick to my planned sacrifices, I adapt and embrace other penances that come my way, and I feel like I’m in a good place. There are other Lents where I feel like a complete failure and the days drag on, leaving me feeling more and more lousy at this sacrifice thing.
I can’t tell what this Lent is yet, but today is one of the “lousy” days. I feel like I’m not doing enough for Lent, yet it’s only the second week and it feels like the fourth. This morning I lost my peace and haven’t been able to navigate unexpected hurdles well. I feel… not great.
Perhaps it’s a good time to remember that “feeling” has a particular place in the spiritual life. And it’s not meant to take the lead. It’s not the driver of the car, it’s not the master of the house. Feelings aren’t bad, but we need to be careful of how much stock we place in them.
Despite how I feel, it’s time for me to surrender once again to God and give this Lent back to him. What does he want to do with it? It’s a scary question.
Maybe Lent isn’t your favorite time of year. It isn’t mine. But that doesn’t change the fact that we need times of fast in our lives. As I’ve written here before, if we are going to properly feast, we must properly fast.
I remember Lent of 2021. Coming out of the pandemic, I wasn’t feeling particularly drawn to giving anything up for Lent or embracing extra penance. I think many of us felt we had already given so much up in the past year. We were feeling… not great. Perhaps that’s how you feel right now. Maybe your spiritual life feels pretty dry. Lent might feel like you’re simply going through the motions.
I challenge you to go through those motions.
Sometimes prayer and penance feels particularly rewarding. At times, I can really feel God’s presence in prayer. I leave my time of morning prayer feeling particularly comforted. Maybe I’m praying for clarity or an intention and I get it fairly easily. At these times, it felt good to pray. There have been times in my life when the penance I adopted for Lent or for a particular intention felt rewarding. It was a struggle, but a fruitful one. It was the feeling of that last sprint in the race, when your legs and lungs are screaming for you to quit, but pressing on, you’re rewarded with that euphoria of accomplishment and perseverance. In a strange way, even the struggle of penance felt good.
Other times, there’s no feeling. Prayer is a drudgery. Penance seems forced and futile.
It’s in these moments that we press on. Father Francis Fernandez speaks about this time of aridity in prayer: “The person who is determined to keep up his prayer even in times of aridity, when all feeling is absent, is perhaps like him who draws water from a well, bucket by bucket: one aspiration after another, an act of sorrow … It is hard work and it demands effort, but he does draw out water.”
Do not let the way your prayer and penance feel right now discourage you. The prayer that you say with little consolation is just as powerful – perhaps in some ways, more powerful. It is good to feel God’s presence in prayer, of course, but is that the only reason I pray? It is good to feel as if my penance is fruitful, but perhaps I’m also being called to offer up the fact that it doesn’t feel fruitful at all.
“To allow oneself to be guided by feelings would be like handing over the management of one’s house to a servant whilst you as its real owner abdicate responsibility for it. It is not feelings that are bad, but rather the degree of importance we attribute to them.” (J. Tissot, The Interior Life)
It’s good to feel good! But it’s not the measure of fruitfulness. If I don’t feel God, it doesn’t mean He’s not listening.
Even though I look at the calendar and see it’s only the second week of Lent, I turn once again to the Lord. As old as all of this feels, the Lord wants to do something new. No matter how it might feel, perhaps we should let him.
Image credit: Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash
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