A Lenten Habit Which Can Save You from Despair

As to your Lent...I can only tell you my own experience.

A mass of good resolutions, I think, are apt to end up in disappointment and to make one depressed.

Also direct fault-uprooting: it makes one concentrate too much on self, and that can be so depressing.

The only resolution I have ever found works is: "Whenever I want to think of myself, I will think of God."

Now, this does not mean, "I will make a long meditation on God," but just some short sharp answer, so to speak, to my thought of self, in God.

For example:

"I am lonely, misunderstood, etc."

"The loneliness of Christ at his trail; the misunderstanding even of his closest friends."

Or:

"I have made a fool of myself."

"Christ mocked---he felt it; he put the mocking first in foretelling his Passion---'The Son of Man shall be mocked, etc.'---made a fool of, before all whom he loved."

Or:

"I can't go on, unhelped."

"Christ couldn't. He couldn't carry the cross without help; he was grateful for human sympathy--Mary Magdalene--his words on that occasion--other examples as they suggest themselves--just pictures that flash through the mind."

This practice becomes a habit, and it is the habit which has saved me from despair!...

Different people have different approaches to Christ.

He has become all things---infant, child, man,---so that we all can approach him in the way easiest for us. The best is to use that way to our heart's content, and not to trouble about any other.

~ Caryll Houselander

{Taken from today's Magnificat}