The joyful season of Lent approaches – a time of preparation for the great joy of Easter. 

We can celebrate only when we have prostrated ourselves in ashes. We can quench our thirst only when we have crossed the dry and parched deserts.  We can feast only after the purification of fasting. 

I never used to pay much attention to Lent.  I used to look forward to pancake Tuesday.  Greatly anticipated were the nickels and dimes hidden in the pancakes dished up by Mom.  Then there was the Lenten Folder.  Each day I would carefully slip a newfound quarter into the cardboard slot, vaguely aware that the money would be put to good use somewhere. 

As I got older, Lent assumed greater meaning.  Call it wisdom – or just plain mundane experience, but I now need Lent.  I need that time to ponder, to wait, to sit in ashes if necessary, and to let God do what God does best – mold and fashion me, and at times break me to start over again. 

I have come to see the value of fasting.  Going without focuses the Lenten period of forty days. 

That time honored period of forty – Israel wandering in the desert for forty years, forty days and forty nights of the Flood, forty days of Jesus tempted in the desert.  We need time to die to ourselves and so live for the world. 

Lent provides that time. Let us enter it with joy and hope.