In the Scriptures, we see the importance of 40 days. The rains that caused the great flood lasted for 40 days. Our Lord remained in the desert for 40 days, and we’ve begun once again our annual 40 days of Lent.
When we look at Our Lord’s time in the desert, it was a time of preparation and purification for his ministry. It was a time to prepare himself to undergo his preaching of the gospel. Lent is a purification and preparation for us to emulate Our Lord by taking these 40 days to prepare to dedicate our lives to Our Lord and to proclaim the Gospel as he did. This is the same as the flood, which was a purification and a preparation of the earth. As St. Peter says, “This prefigured baptism, which saves you now. It is not a removal of dirt from the body but an appeal to God for clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The flood washed away all wickedness and evil on the Earth.
Lent, which we have just entered into, is a time to allow God’s grace to wash away the wickedness and evil in our lives. We do this by using the spiritual gifts such as fasting and abstinence. Fasting a couple of times throughout Lenten season from food and abstaining from certain kinds of food. We do this through spiritual growth by taking advantage of this season to grow spiritually; and of course, we use during this season the sacraments and the sacramentals. Sacraments such as Confession and Eucharist, sacramentals such as a crucifix – especially the beautiful prayer before a crucifix – and holy water. This is why we don’t remove holy water from our fonts. It’s such a powerful sacramental.
We do all this – we use all these gifts, all these tools – because we want to follow Our Lord who wants to lead us to the Father. That’s why He died for our sins: to lead us to the Father. This Lenten season is a time to put our focus back on Him, to refocus on Him, and to head his call. As Our Lord said, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.”
One thing we must not do if we are to follow Our Lord is allow spiritual complacency in our lives. It’s too easy to fall into that complacency. We all have to be “practicing” Catholics. Sadly, this phrase “practicing Catholic” has kind of become almost a joke politically, because it’s used by those who politically want to deny teachings – a politician or someone who is promoting an agenda that’s contrary to church teaching – and instead want to change the church in their image. They’ll say something like, “Well, I’m a practicing Catholic, and because of that I think the church needs to change this…”
Despite that, we truly do need to practice our faith. We must practice just as a basketball player does. Let me ask you this: it’s tournament time. Everything is going on with the tournaments. Would a coach allow a player to play in one of these tournament games if he skipped practices? If he said, “You know what coach? I don’t need any practice any more. I’m a good ballplayer. I don’t need to go to practice. I don’t need to do these drills. I’m just gonna only play during the game. That’s only time I’m going to touch the ball. Other than that, I don’t need to do it anymore.” Of course not. If the player is lucky, the coach is just going to say, “You’re going to dress out, but you’re not going to play.” More likely the coach is going to say, “Just don’t even bother to put on your uniform.” A good basketball player puts a full effort during practices – puts his full effort towards the drills, towards the shooting, towards the running. A great basketball player does even more practicing after practice, outside of practice. And, on top of that, a great player does exercising, such as hitting the weight room or doing extra running. This is all essential parts of being a great basketball player.
We should desire to be great Catholics. We should practice our faith daily by working out our spiritual life using these spiritual tools which the Church gives us, seeking to get deeper and stronger in our spiritual life. Of course this is all through the grace of God, but this should be our daily goal during the Lenten season. Now is the time to “pick up the ball,” to get deeper into this practice.
We should be seeking to overcome our spiritual complacency, because sadly we live in a culture which really doesn’t demand that we practice our faith. It allows us to drift through our spiritual life. We have no problem doing that, but the question I have for each person here individually – and I want you to think about this – when is the last time you did any spiritual practice? I mean other than coming to Saturday night or Sunday morning mass. When is the last time you came into a church – this church or any other church – and just sat in front of the tabernacle in prayer, silent prayer? When is the last time you prayed a Rosary or other devotion? When is the last time you gathered your family to pray the Our Father – a simple practice that I argue every Catholic family should do every day?
Just as a basketball player needs to practice, we need to practice in our spiritual life. While the high school basketball season is almost done – just a couple more weeks to go – the spiritual season lasts our whole life.
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