For many, it is easier to be caught up in the academic, fiscal, or calendar years than the liturgical year that indicates the ultimate frame of our lives. In my case, this is especially true during Lent. This year, I came across a pithy meditation of Newman’s, “A Short Road to Perfection”, which I hope can reframe the way I understand Lent and discipleship more generally.
Newman’s description of self-denial in light of the invisible world can help us to examine and renew three fundamental relationships: with God, our neighbor, and the natural world.
If you are anything like me, you have on at least one occasion squandered the holy season of Lent. The Church has established such times on the liturgical calendar so that we might enter more deeply into the mysteries of Christ's life.
One of the great challenges in Newman scholarship today has to do with making Newman's work more applicable for members of the younger generations, many of whom have never been exposed to his thought and writings.
It's easy to read this account from Scripture and to cast aspersions on Esau. "How could he have been so foolish?" we wonder. "I'd never act that rashly," we tell ourselves. Yet how often in our own lives do we make a similar, yet graver mistake by squandering the gifts of God—in our case, the graces that we receive through the sacraments—in exchange for some lesser good?
For Newman, the disciplines of Lent—in this case, fasting—are a way for the Christian to participate mystically in the life of Christ. By intensifying our self-denial for these forty days of Lent, we come to know, in part, what Christ experienced in full measure:
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