I LIKE LENT. SORT OF.(First published in 'NZ Catholic', March 9)

Lent is here. O me miserum! No, seriously, I like Lent. Sort of.

It doesn’t help that here in the antipodes this liturgical season is opposed to its natural one, of autumn. These 40 days are graced for spring in the soul, for putting forth the fresh  leaves of new concepts of love, for opening up to warmer rays from the divine Sun.

Superpope Francis suggests imitating Christ who became poor to make us rich, adding, ‘No self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.’

Pardon me? Hurting’s not allowed. We’re not supposed to hurt others, although domestic violence, business bullies, cyber-bullies and abortions indicate more people are doing so than ever, and we mustn’t hurt ourselves either, although self-harm and suicide rates suggest the bandaid of self indulgence isn’t curing the necrotising fasciitis of secularism. Look where helping ourselves – to fast food and booze and a comfy sofa, for example, has got us. To endemic obesity, for a start.

Someone’s told me we shouldn’t fast without the guidance of a spiritual director - and who, she asked, was mine? ‘Fr Dubay,’ I said. I could have added ‘R I P’, but Thomas Dubay S M’s Fire Within is still my standby. Anyway, the requirement for all Christians to fast except the sick, elderly and very young surely means there aren’t enough spiritual directors to go round.

Our best guide in fasting is the Holy Spirit, sought and found in contemplative prayer, the fruit of which, says the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, is ‘high spiritual wisdom’. In Spiritual Letters, Abbot John Chapman calls it ‘mystical knowledge’, which ‘the saints regularly imply is to be … prayed for, aimed at by mortification and detachment’: as St Teresa remarks, ‘prayer and self indulgence do not go together’.

Like hurt, mortification and detachment get a bad press. So does humiliation. If I fast from coffee or wine, say, that’s scary. Specially when ‘im indoors knows, as he would, with Goody Two-Shoes sitting there glumly of an evening with a glass of water. Some might think I’m setting myself up for failure.  So what? Failure’s humiliating, but ‘the chosen (are tested) in the furnace of humiliation’ (Ecc 2, 5).

In accepting humiliations we get real. ‘Without me you can do nothing’ (Jn 15,5). That’s the reality, and we need to get a grip: ‘Only he who is humble is capable of really loving God and his neighbour’ (Fr Gabriel of S Mary Magdalen, OCD).

Contemplative prayer leads to fasting, which leads to almsgiving.  By sacrificing some luxury and giving its value to Caritas we’re enriched by Christ whom we resemble more closely, and by the Father who loves and befriends us to the degree that we resemble his Son.

 We’re investing in a celestial bank and what’s more, if we make our Lenten sacrifice wholeheartedly, we earn interest on our investment.

I guess Superpope knows a bargain when he sees one.