What is your true light?

Despite a winter of historic snowfall in South Bend and Punxsutawney Phil proclaiming six more weeks of winter, it seems like things are finally looking up. The blue skies and warm, friendly sunshine we’ve had this week have made trekking to class in an Arctic blizzard seem like a distant memory. Campus is buzzing with the news that this Wednesday is forecast to reach a 60-degree high. It seems a bit premature to say we’re out of the trenches yet … but it’s hard not to feel optimistic after living under the permacloud for weeks on end.

Still, amidst all the excited chatter about warm weather, a dark cloud looms on the horizon. For all the Catholics on campus, next Wednesday not only marks a drastic rise in temperatures; it also signifies the start of the Lenten season. All of a sudden, we’re getting withdrawal from reels before even deleting Instagram, and as we prepare to give up sweets, each NDH chocolate chip cookie starts looking like our last. Suffice it to say, the next 40 days are looking bleak. This dread, of course, sets in every year. But as we struggle to commit ourselves to a particular sacrifice, it becomes painfully obvious why Lenten fasting is so important.

As humans, we are all motivated by inner drives. Some are instinctual, such as the need for food and the desire for companionship. Others are adapted over time, such as the aspiration to get good grades, founded on the belief that such things will contribute to our personal success and human flourishing. And still others are unnecessary for (and often detrimental to) our survival, yet we seek them simply for the sake of pleasure. This last category is often full of things we commonly give up for Lent — social media, caffeine and desserts, to name a few. It’s interesting that despite the fact that we could all survive quite easily without these pleasures, we find ourselves incredibly resistant to letting them go. In fact, the sense of doom we experience at the prospect of eliminating certain things from our lives reveals a lot about our attachments and priorities. 

Lent is an opportunity to ask ourselves what the true light is in our lives. In other words, what are we driven most to seek? As Catholics, we are called to seek Christ above all other things, but how many of us can truly admit to doing this? Just check your screen time: how much time do you spend daily on social media? Now compare that to the amount of time you spend in prayer, or in conversations with friends, or working out. It quickly becomes obvious where our priorities lie. While our hearts long for Christ, life is filled with shiny distractions that falsely offer to fulfill our deepest yearning instead. Enticing promises of wealth, friends, status and the like make it all too easy to fall into the trap of giving our hearts to worldly things. But, ironically, the more time we pursue happiness through empty pleasures, the more unhappy we will be. In a strange paradox, it is by uniting ourselves to the suffering Christ that we will experience the most fulfillment and joy. We must suffer to be happy and deny ourselves in order to be fulfilled. This is fasting, and it is precisely what we attempt to do during Lent.

It doesn’t sound glamorous — but it’s not supposed to be. Cutting down on things that distract us from pursuing the true good is difficult, and although it may get easier over time, it never really becomes easy. But it is ultimately going to fulfill us by drawing us closer to the true light, which is Christ. Now, of course, this doesn’t mean we can never eat sweets or watch TV again; it’s simply important to reflect now and then on how such things may begin to replace Christ as the guiding force in our lives, the innermost desire of our hearts towards which we must strive.

So this Lent, let’s all strive to reorient ourselves away from distractions and towards the good. Perhaps as we soak in the long-awaited sunshine during the coming days, it will serve as a reminder for us all to seek the light of Christ this Lenten season.