Lent is not a liturgical season most people look forward to with eagerness, nor is it one we journey through with a great deal of excitement. Lent has always been a serious time, when we take on various penances and sacrifices, often more than is even helpful to spiritual growth. Thus we are always in need of new insights to help us make the forty days of Lent a more enriching season.

One insight that might help is the close connection, in the northern hemisphere, between Lent and the season of spring. In nature spring is a time when we rake up the winter debris, uncover the perennials, prune shrubs, and burn off fields. All of this is done to encourage new growth. The focus is on life. So too the activities, even the disciplines, of Lent; they are for the sake of new growth. Think of Lent as a time of renewal, reassessing our lives-tossing off some old habits, placing things in order, and acquiring some new ways of living.

One of the great gospels of Lent is that of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. This gospel teaches us a lesson about how to respond in a new way to something that is evil. Some people thought Jesus was going soft on sin. But they missed the all-important point that things are wrong not because of the punishment attached to them, but because of the nature of the action itself, and the harm such an action does to oneself and one's relationships. To respond with forgiveness and compassion to a person who has sinned does not mean pretending or believing that the person has not sinned. The response of forgiveness and compassion is just a new way of approaching a situation that needs change. The focus is on life-the response of compassion is for the sake of new growth.

During Lent we ought not to take on disciplines or activities because they are hard or make us miserable. We are called to take on disciplines and activities that make new life spring from within us.

© Harcourt Religion Publishers/BROWN-ROA