Reflection written by Brothers of the Sacred Heart United States Provincial, Bro. Ronald Hingle '78, S.C.

If you're like me, beginning the Lenten season was a nonstarter. In some respects, I feel like we've been in an extended penitential season since last March when we began the COVID quarantine. What more could the Lord ask or expect of me during these next 40 days? I've already been forced to "give up" so many things that give me life, e.g., embracing family members, visiting communities, and spending quality time with friends. My typical annual sacrifices of food and drink and more intentional commitment to prayer and simple acts of charity seem to pale in comparison to what I was already forced to forgo. Though I could afford to lose a few pounds and would benefit from exercise, especially the exercise of a more lively and intense personal prayer life, part of me felt that- with the masses across the country and world - I had suffered enough.

But as we settle into the second week of Lent and as we begin the month of March, the words of the prophet Isaiah from the Friday after Ash Wednesday have echoed in my mind. In truth, they have haunted and challenged me like never before to have a different type of Lent.

"Is this the manner of fasting I wish, of keeping a day of penance: That a man bow his head like a reed and lie in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed; your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!" (Isaiah 58: 5-9a)

Reflections of Rachelle Linner, a freelance author and spiritual director, have moved me, too.

"What would it be like if we took the prophet Isaiah literally? What if we believed what he says about the kind of fasting God wants? What if, this Lent, we were to fast in the way that would make our voice heard on high? What if we committed to a new type of sacrifice, to perform the corporal works of justice?" I agree with what she believes: "I suspect it would be a much harder Lent." Both Rachelle and Isaiah have stopped me dead in my tracks and pulled me up short.

Lent is not about my being faithful to personal resolutions for self-improvement, but about striving to pattern my life, each moment of each day, after Jesus', who went about loving and forgiving others, even those who wronged him. It's not about overcoming my spiritual, physical, or intellectual lethargy or apathy, but about putting on the mind and heart of Jesus and acting on these intuitions for the well-being of others, especially for those most in need. The fasting to which Isaiah summons us is not about me, but about becoming more aware of how our action or inaction - "what we have done and what we have failed to do" - contributes to the injustice in society, even if it's only my small corner of it, and doing something about it.

The great twentieth-century Protestant theologian Karl Barth famously said that one should do theology "with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other." May Isaiah's words call us to eat the chocolates and drink the soft drinks while doing the weightier work of Lent.

May our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving be slightly different and much more meaningful for each of us this Lenten season as we seek to accompany Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and to Calvary, two places I know I'd rather not go.