Lent is meant to help us focus on the difficult task of dying to self in order to follow Jesus more closely so that we grow in holiness. This week I read the following from St Leo the Great:
If any wish to find out whether God dwells in them, let them investigate with a sincere examination the depths of their own hearts. Let them wisely ask how they can resist pride with humility, how they can struggle against ill will with benevolence, how they might not be taken in by the tongues of flatterers, and how they might take pleasure in the successes of others. Let them ask whether they do not want to "return evil for evil," and whether they prefer to forget injuries and let them go unavenged rather than to lose the image and likeness of their Creator....Since we know, then, dearly beloved, that "God is love" and "works all things in everyone," pursue love in such a way that the hearts of all believers everywhere might flow together into a single desire for chaste love. May passing and empty things not take hold of us. Let us strive with a constant desire toward those things that will always remain.
What a great Lenten examination!
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