By Derek Rotty, Catholic Exchange, March 25, 2022
Derek Rotty is a husband, father, historian, theologian, & Director of Evangelization & Discipleship at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Jackson, TN. His first book, A Life of Conversion: Meeting Christ in the Gospels, is available from Our Sunday Visitor Press. Follow his other ruminations at www.derekrotty.com.
We have just passed the half-way point of Lent. That means that we still three weeks remaining until the Holy Triduum and Easter Sunday.
Is there any other time in our lives when six weeks feels like, well, six weeks? I am in conversations regularly with people who speak about how time passes so quickly. School years and basketball seasons seem to come and go in the blink of an eye, and we wonder where the time went. Yet, just over halfway into this blessed liturgical season, Lent seems to be moving at the pace of molasses pouring from a jar. Perhaps I am not alone in my question: do we really have three more weeks to go?
Lent seems so long for two reasons. The first is completely objective: Lent is, in fact, the longest season of denial and suffering during the Church’s year. No other season requires sustained fasting from worldly pleasures like Lent. Some people make truly heroic sacrifices for six full weeks (without cheating on Sundays), such as giving up sugar or alcohol or red meat or curse words and gossip. Lent is not for spiritual wimps. It is for spiritual warriors who are willing to fight to express their devotion to God. …
