From One Season to Another

Happy fat Tuesday! And blessings for the beginning of Lent.

I've now been a Catholic for a number of years, but this is the first in which I truly used today - Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, whatever you wish to call it - to prepare for Lent instead of just indulge. I've always been happy to celebrate the day as a big party and a reason to consume whatever sweets and drinks I wanted in the largest amounts possible.

This year, the preparation made sense. I ate donuts and sweet bread - with plans to leave all that I didn't finish on a table in the staff lounge at school. I sorted out the Christmas candy that would not keep from what will, and spent the night lounging in bed eating cookies because any I don't finish get thrown away tomorrow morning. It isn't the same as trying to use up cooking ingredients and avoid wasting money, but it's the closest experience I've had, ridding the house of the things I won't be eating during Lent to avoid just letting them spoil. I've been cleaning my room, if not fully wiping down every surface and dusting every corner. Putting away clothes that won't be worn, items that won't be used, ridding my room of clutter the same as I hope to do with my heart.

It's time, for whatever hours remain of today, to make those preparations. Clean and empty the house, put away worldly things, and get ready to meet God out in the desert. As the clock strikes midnight tonight we enter a season of repentance. It's time to abstain from lesser goods in search of higher, to turn our thoughts to who we are before God rather than what we want before men, and to do so cheerfully, knowing what awaits us at the end. For what awaits us is Easter, is life, is heaven, if only we have the courage to pass through the desert first.