First Sunday of Lent, with kids

(This is from 2008. Our family life has changed very much, but these ideas are still pertinent!)

I am so grateful that the Church gives us these 40 days each year to focus on the Paschal Mystery, plus 50 days to celebrate it - that's 90 days of each year during which our attention is drawn to this deep mystery of faith! The ritual and readings and art and music and symbolism are all so rich, we must absorb them in layers. Maybe my love for this season is evident in the fact that 3 of the 5 books I've written have been different meditations on the Way of the Cross, and a fourth one uses Christ's Seven Last Words as its structure.

This is the opportunity we are given each year to re-focus, pare down to the essentials, re-evaluate what is necessary in our lives and what is distraction. Elizabeth summed it up well, and shares a prayer that can keep these ideas before us. There is so much distraction on this planet! It takes constant effort to keep our focus.

As a family, we keep the season-long focus very simple: praying, fasting, giving. I hope to share more about this throughout Lent, but the quick overview looks like this:

Every day we pray - talk to God and His saints. It is during Lent that we really focus on the traditional dedications for each day of the week, and add a little invocation or prayer to the end of each prayer time to keep this before our minds. There are also the solemnities and memorials that fall within Lent, such as Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Valentine, St. Bernadette and St. Joseph.

Every day we fast - deny ourselves something to show our love. Sometimes this is a secret, something we do only for God; like not taking the piece or portion that we want, or holding our tongue when someone annoys us. Other times, it is something we deny ourselves for someone else, like letting someone else go first, or letting them choose the game we play. Only twice a week the older kids and Mom and Dad fast from eating between meals; on those days, we all refrain from dessert (which is an immovable institution in this house!).

Every day we give - we give of our time, talent, or treasure to others. We get a little creative here, as kids don't have money to toss into a collection basket to check this one off their Lenten list! So, we make cards and write letters to people, clean out our rooms and toyboxes to donate to charity, take some time to teach someone something we know, etc.

It all begins with Mass together on Ash Wednesday. After the comparisons and discussions of who received the messiest ash cross and who felt ashes rolling down their noses and who feels itchy because of the ashes (kids are funny that way), we are reminded all day as we look at each other that we are embarking on something different, something new. This mark on our foreheads marks the start of something - it is no longer Ordinary Time; something extraordinary is here. We are also reminded of that by the growling of our stomachs, the simpler meatless fare, the new centerpiece on the table. We are geared up; we are prepared to prepare.

The Church knows we need this. Every single year.