Quotes for Lent

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Among my Lenten prayer activities is listening every day to the Hallow app. Their Lent Pray40 podcast has been focusing on the story of Servant of God Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit priest from the United States who went to minister in Russia and during World War II was convicted of being a spy for the Vatican. He spent 23 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. When he returned to the United States in 1963, he wrote four books, one of which, He Leadeth Me, is the basis of many of the Lent Pray40 posts.

Fr. Ciszek died in 1984; he has been under consideration for beatification since 1990.

The podcast has been a nice addition to my daily prayer routine; I particularly like the story of Sister Mary Bernice, a Missionary of Charity who grew up in Baltimore and met Mother Teresa several times. What I want to reflect on here, however, are a couple of quotes I came across on Sunday.

The first is from the homily Fr. Mike Schmitz gave on the Pray40 podcast. He quoted Fr. Ciszek: “The Kingdom of God will not be brought to fulfillment on Earth by one great sword-swinging battle against the powers of darkness, but only by each of us laboring and suffering day after day as Christ labored and suffered, until all things at last have been transformed.”

This quote struck me because I strongly suspect I will never be involved in anything like a sword-swinging battle, nor will I face trials on any scale near those of Fr. Ciszek. Instead, my labors in the vineyard of Christ are of the workaday variety. I hope they will bear fruit for the Kingdom, but in the meantime my sufferings are so trivial that I hesitate to bring them in prayer to God. How can I complain to him about my everyday problems when there is war and famine, flood and fire, hatred and hard-heartedness in so many parts of the world?

And yet the troubles I dare not complain about do stress me. I do not “rejoice in the Lord always.” In fact, if I’m honest, it’s not unless I consciously count my blessings that I acknowledge to God and myself that I am, indeed, blessed.

In that context, another quote from Fr. Ciszek in Fr. Schmitz’s homily hit home: “No matter how small my sufferings are, I have a choice: I can either let them make me bitter, or I can meet them with the confidence that God will not abandon me.”

I am much too blessed to be bitter; I want the joy brought by the confidence that God will not abandon me.  This is the promise of Christ; my challenge is to put my trust in him.

Shortly after I heard Fr. Schmitz’s homily, his message was reinforced by the Holy Father himself. As I scrolled through my Facebook feed, Pope Francis’ weekly Angelus prayer popped up. In that address, he asked, “What is the glory I desire for myself, for my life, that I dream of for my future?”

In his talk, the pope challenged his listeners to consider whether they want glory based on impressing others with their abilities or possessions, or “the path of giving and forgiveness, that of the Crucified Jesus? ...”

“Indeed,” the pope concluded, according to the Vatican News post, “let us remember that when we give and forgive, God’s glory shines in us.”

Having confidence in God and following the path of giving and forgiveness are not goals I’ll meet this Lent but rather the work of a lifetime, and a task that must be undertaken each day. My prayer, therefore, is to take one step farther along this path, and ask for God’s grace, that his glory will shine in me.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic. Reach her at marie@icatholic.org.