How is your Lent going?

Right about now is when the newness and fervor start to wear off. We’ve left the ashes in the bathroom sink – or maybe on the pillow. The things we gave up – chocolate, TV, deserts – are starting to look better and better. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Maybe you’re dreaming about Ben and Jerry. Maybe you’ve even fallen off the wagon and splurged on Chubby Hubby or Cherry Garcia and felt the morning-after guilt.

A lot of us find ourselves in that situation during Lent – suddenly doing something out of habit that we had sworn to give up. Fundamentalists might call it backsliding. But I think it’s part of what makes us human — what makes our Lenten journey so challenging – and so vital.

And it is, first and foremost, a journey.

We can make the mistake of thinking about Lent as just a few weeks on the calendar – a fixed point in time. But Lent isn’t a destination. It’s a journey. We are pilgrims traveling on an unfamiliar road, seeking to draw nearer to God.

We’re leaving our comfort zones. (Some of us are leaving our comfort food.)

In some ways, we aren’t that different from Abram in today’s reading from Exodus. God calls to Abram, and asks him to do something that sounds almost impossible:

“Go forth from the land of your kinsmen…and from your father’s house…to a place I will show you.”

In other words: leave everything you know, everything you’ve grown up with, all those you love. Head for an unnamed place. I will show you the way. Trust in me. Believe in me. And you will be blessed.

And with little more than that to guide him, Abram goes.

What an incredible leap of faith. And boundless trust.

It is echoed, again and again, in the psalm we just sang:

“Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.”

That could be our cry during these weeks, as we continue our Lenten journey of penance, and prayer. We may not know what lies ahead. We may not know where God is leading us. But we trust in His love, His guidance, His mercy, as we draw closer to Him.

No one said it would be easy.

In the early part of the last century, one of the great witnesses to the faith was a Carmelite nun, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Most of us know her better as Edith Stein. She was born to a German Jewish family in 1891…became an atheist…but was baptized a Catholic in 1922. Eleven years later, she entered the cloister. And in 1942, she lost her life at Auschwitz. Today she is recognized as a saint.

God asked her to go forth, just as He did with Abram, and she responded – venturing into to a world she never foresaw, meeting a fate she never imagined. But her devotion and her trust were complete.

In the early 1930s, she gave a lecture and spoke of what it takes to be a Christian.

“Whoever belongs to Christ,” she said, “must go the whole way with him. He must mature to adulthood. He must one day or other walk the way of the cross to Gethsemane and Golgotha.”

Well, that puts in perspective the idea of giving up chocolate for Lent, doesn’t it?

And it illuminates, with a blinding clarity, what we are all called to do: it is nothing less than to walk the way of the cross.

We come to understand why in today’s gospel – where we are told of yet another journey– up a mountain — where Jesus is miraculously transfigured.

Here is a breathtaking glimpse of Jesus-as-God – a beautiful and humbling foreshadowing of heaven. This is what all our journeying is about.

When it happens, the apostles are so terrified, they can’t even look. But Jesus comforts them, as he does so often in the gospels. “Rise,” he says, “and do not be afraid.”

And so He speaks to us, wherever we are on our journey.

Rise, and do not be afraid.

We have been called, just like Abram, just like St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Just like the countless others across the ages who have been called, following a path laid before them…trusting, faithfully trusting, that God would take them where they were meant to go.

Some of them were saints. But all were sinners, just like us – walking their own way of the cross.

Rise and do not be afraid.

They are words to encourage us on our Lenten journey. Yes, there will be setbacks and stumbles. We will make mistakes. We may even grow lazy or indifferent. We will be frustrated and embarrassed by our humanity, and our weakness. There are minefields waiting for us – including Ben and Jerry. But that, too, is part of our journey.

We should never forget why we are following this path, and making these sacrifices, and trying to turn our hearts back to God. We strive toward a paradise we can’t begin to imagine, where Christ dwells in light, and in love, transfigured forever.

And we aren’t alone – in Lent, or in life. He is waiting for us, hoping for us, praying for us.

So rise. And do not be afraid.