Lent Teaches How to Give Yourself Away

At once the Spirit drove him out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him.--Mark 1:12-13

Lent often seems like an imposition, an exercise in pointless self-denial and suffering. Why does it matter whether or not I eat chocolate for 40 days? If I wanted to diet, I'd do it rather differently. Why do we put ourselves through this exercise in frustration and little irritations?  What's the point?

The point reaches right outside us into the heart of God.  The Trinity is a communion of persons, whose life at its core consists of eternal, total self-gift.  The Father gives himself utterly to the Son; the Son gives himself utterly to the Father; and the gift given is the Holy Spirit.  This level of self-gift is natural only for the Trinity.  It is truly supernatural--above our nature--for humanity.  When we give ourselves so utterly, we die.

Then he said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.”--Luke 9:23-27

But to give ourselves so utterly to Christ is to receive life eternal, for Christ is utterly generous with himself, pouring out the last of his blood for us and our salvation.  He offers to graft us onto himself so that we may share in his divinity.

Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.  Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned.--John 15:4-6

We come to live his life and share in his death. We come to the fullness of life by giving our lives away.

...The retreat examined this connection between sacrifice and agape love by expounding on two images Jesus used, "sowing" and "pruning." Both are practicable ways to follow Jesus's command to lose our lives. The divine way led to Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. "The cross is thought to be one of the less pleasing parts of Christianity," Father Hugo said. "But the cross is the most positive part of Christianity. Because Jesus died out of love." In sowing and pruning, we do the same.

Sowing is rooted in the idea of detachment from the love of worldly goods: the decision to let loose the goods of this world in order to clasp the love of God. The retreat treated Jesus's parable of the farmer to show this. We are like the farmer sowing wheat. The wheat is good, just as many of our possessions and activities are good. But the farmer still must throw away the wheat in order to gain a harvest, and the seed must die to bear fruit. Just like Jesus, we must "throw away" the good things of our lives in order to gain something better: divine life. "It is the law of life," Father Hugo said. "To gain life, you must first lose it."

Father Hugo taught that the holy sacrifice of the Mass is central to our work of sowing. The only true response to it is to lose our own lives. If we don't offer our lives along with Christ's sacramental sacrifice, Monsignor Meenan said, "the liturgy for us is, well, kind of phony."--"The Catholic Worker Retreat of Father Hugo changed my Life" by Rosemary Hugo