What is Lent? The Collect for Ash Wednesday Mass gives us the answer: “Grant, O Lord, that we may begin with holy fasting this campaign of Christian service, so that, as we take up battle against spiritual evils, we may be armed with weapons of self-restraint.” This striking military imagery points to Lent as a time of conflict, a time to “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Tm 6:12). Christians, like an army prepared for battle, mount a campaign; they take the fight to the enemy. But who is this enemy, and what weapons should we use against him? In other words, what does it mean to engage in a campaign against “spiritual evils . . . armed with weapons of self-restraint”?

Spiritual evils include both diabolical temptations and our own propensity to sin, which can easily harden into self-destructive behavior. Our fight is against self-inflicted wounds of sinning that burden our souls with seemingly intractable bad habits. First, we give in to doing what we know is wrong. After some time, we give into the idea that we were mistaken when we thought what we were doing was in fact sinful. We make an accommodation with evil, developing a mindset that sees our sins simply as “me being me.” Pretty soon the only sins we acknowledge and condemn are the ones that other people commit against us.

The Lenten weapons of self-restraint help us to counteract this penchant for turning away from God and into ourselves. They help us to undo our embrace of sin and curb our wayward desire to seek “independence” from being judged or ruled by anyone else, including God. Denying ourselves good and wholesome things that we enjoy trains us to say “no” to temptations more easily.

Fasting is a very useful Lenten practice. Food is good. Gluttony is not. The decision not to eat or drink some things that we like for forty days is a true declaration of independence from our own desires. Fasting is done to remind us that we must restrain our behavior if we are to gain control over our will. Forty days is sufficiently long enough to develop good habits that make virtuous living easier. The “inspiration” we had on Ash Wednesday when we decided upon our Lenten penances (what I would give up) will mean nothing without the “perspiration” of saying “no” to self and “yes” to God each beautiful day of Lent.

Lenten fasting is accompanied by prayer and almsgiving. These are powerful weapons in the campaign to be more united to God during these forty days. My mother encouraged me to go to daily Mass during Lent when I was a student in our parochial school. I am ever grateful for that guidance. Our school gave all the students Lenten mite boxes into which we were encouraged to put the coins that we otherwise would have used to purchase candy (in those long-ago days when a few coins were all you needed to buy a Hershey Bar). We all need to experience the counterintuitive joy that comes from detaching ourselves from material things for love of God and neighbor.

Let us think about Lent as a time to take up the peaceful arms of Lenten sacrifices as we campaign against whatever it is in our lives that keeps us away from God. The victory in this struggle is assured if we make good use of God’s grace and follow Christ unto Calvary.