Lent: Self-improvement or Conversion of Heart?
For many of us, Lent began in childhood with heroic sacrifices of sweets or crisps. For a ten-year-old, that was no small thing. And it was good.
The difficulty is that we can remain at that level. Lent becomes little more than “giving something up.” Perhaps we refine it slightly: we cut down on sugar, cigarettes, social media, and streaming. We turn it into forty days of lifestyle improvement or a spiritualised health programme.
There is nothing wrong with better habits. Cutting back on endless scrolling or late-night snacking is no bad thing. But none of that is Lent. You can do that in October.
Lent is not primarily about mental hygiene or physical discipline. It is about the heart.
In the prophet Joel’s cry, echoed in the Ash Wednesday liturgy, God reproaches a people who are busy with religious gestures but untouched within. Tearing one’s garments was an outward sign of repentance. Yet God says: You are very good at tearing cloth. What about your heart?
The garment is the surface. The heart is the depth.
Contrition literally means a breaking of the heart. Not a mood. Not a programme. A breaking.
The Fast That Misses the Point
The prophet Isaiah sharpens it even further. He describes people who fast rigorously and yet quarrel, exploit, and strike others with their fists. Their stomachs are empty; their hearts are unchanged.
We may not strike others physically. But we can strike with words. Or with the words we never speak aloud — the judgements, resentments, sarcastic interior commentaries that pummel others into silence.
It is possible to fast from food and feast on harshness.
One practical suggestion often overlooked is a fast of the tongue. To refrain from words that wound. To avoid rash judgment. To refuse slander, especially about those not present to defend themselves. Even to abstain from the mental rehearsals of criticism that never leave our lips.
This is far closer to the heart of Lent.
You can endure hunger and still be proud. You can give up dessert and still be unkind. But you cannot abstain from cruelty, even interior cruelty, without something in the heart shifting.
And that is precisely the point.
Forty Years to Discover the Heart
In the Book of Deuteronomy, God explains why Israel wandered in the desert for forty years: “to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.”
Not so that God would discover it, but so that they would.
That is a sobering thought. Lent is not merely about self-denial. It is about revelation. The desert exposes what we are attached to. It reveals what we thought we could not live without.
The Israelites had escaped slavery. They had crossed the Red Sea. And yet, when faced with hardship, they began to long for Egypt. Not for freedom but for cucumbers and onions.
They were willing to exchange liberty for familiar comforts.
That is not ancient history. It is the story of every Lent.
“Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone”
God fed Israel with manna in the desert (mysterious bread from heaven) so that they might learn that “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.”
Those words are later taken up by Christ in the wilderness. In the forty days before His public ministry, He relives Israel’s desert and where they faltered, He stands firm.
When tempted to turn stones into bread, He refuses. Not because bread is bad. Bread is good. Necessary, even. But not sufficient.
That is the great temptation: to treat earthly delights as though they were ultimate.
Bread today may look like:
The morning cappuccino we feel we cannot face the day without.
The series we must finish.
The endless short videos delivering little jolts of dopamine.
The purchase that promises satisfaction.
The comfort that dulls discomfort.
Individually, none of these is evil. The danger lies in the quiet interior voice that whispers: You cannot live without me.
Saint Augustine describes his struggle with sensual attachments as though they tugged at the garments of his flesh, pleading, “Do you really think you can live without us?”
That is the drama of Lent. The tugging becomes audible when we try to pull away.
Until then, we imagine ourselves free.
The Tethered Eagle
There is an image from the spiritual tradition: an eagle tied by an iron chain and an eagle tied by a thread. If it cannot break the thread, the thread is as binding as the chain.
We often say of our attachments, “It’s nothing. I could give it up whenever I like.”
Perhaps. But until we do, we do not know.
Lent is not about despising created goods. It is about testing the tether. It is about discovering whether what we call “small” has in fact bound us.
In that sense, Lent is liberation. A gentle, deliberate untying.
From Slavery to the Paschal Mystery
Israel did not learn freedom in a single night at the Red Sea. It took forty years to cleanse Egypt from their hearts.
Christ, the new Moses, enters the wilderness for forty days, not only for Himself but for us. He leads us into a desert where some comforts are reduced, where our “little gods” take a hit.
This is not punishment. It is preparation.
Lent does not end on Easter Sunday. Liturgically, it reaches its fulfilment at the beginning of the Easter Triduum — on Holy Thursday — as we enter into the Paschal Mystery: Christ’s Passion, death, and Resurrection.
That is the destination.
Fasting, prayer, almsgiving: these are not self-improvement strategies. They are ways of clearing space in the heart so that we may walk more closely with Christ into His saving work.
Without that focus, Lent becomes naturalistic, a slim-down plan with ashes.
With that focus, even small sacrifices take on luminous meaning. The Way of the Cross, quiet prayer, silence, small acts of hidden charity. These begin to taste different. There is a deeper delight, one that does not spike and fade, but settles and strengthens.
As one of the desert fathers wrote, the flesh is weakened so that the soul may recover its freedom.
A Simple Aspiration
Perhaps the most fitting prayer for the beginning of Lent is this:
“Separate me, Lord, from anything that separates me from You.”
It is disarmingly simple and profoundly daring.
Because we do not always know what separates us. We are often blind to our own attachments. The desert reveals them.
To pray that prayer is to hand the Lord a blank cheque. We do not fill in the amount. We simply sign our name and say: Show me. Gently. Patiently. But truly.
If there is something I cling to more than You, loosen my grip.
If there is an attachment I have named as harmless but which quietly rules me, expose it.
If there is a comfort I would trade my freedom for, lead me out of Egypt.
Such a prayer is not dramatic. It is steady. And it is transformative.
Refugees from Egypt
The Israelites were, in a sense, refugees, fleeing Pharaoh and the fleshpots of Egypt. We, too, begin Lent as refugees: fleeing not geography but slavery of heart.
We are smaller than we like to admit. Weak in ways that surprise us. Sometimes even embarrassed by the strength of our attachment to trivial things.
That is why we do not walk alone.
We turn to Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners and ask her to help us begin well. She knows what it is to ponder in the heart. She knows the hidden work God does in silence. She knows how to remain faithful when the desert stretches long.
Lent is not about becoming impressive. It is about becoming honest.
Let your heart be torn, not your garments.
Let the surface give way to depth.
Let the thread be tested.
Let the little gods be unmasked.
And then, when Holy Week comes, we may find ourselves walking more freely beside Christ, not because we perfected ourselves, but because we allowed Him to free us.
That is a Lent worth entering.
This blog post is inspired by a meditation preached by Fr Gavan Jennings in the Be Silent Podcast for Ash Wednesday.