Declaring Dependence
Lent can be a dangerous time.
Lent is the period in the liturgical calendar during which asceticism flourishes most abundantly. It is the period during which we expend a lot of time and energy channeling our willpower – a worthy practice, for, to exercise self-discipline is to celebrate the free will that contributes to our status as human creatures of God.
Yet, how easy it can be to forget the motivation behind our sacrifices. While it is glorious and right that Lent emphasizes the value of self-discipline, we can easily distort the underlying significance of our self-discipline, sliding into a dangerous thought pattern whereby we give ourselves too much credit for our spiritual progress. For example: “I resisted cookies for an entire 40 days – what impressive powers of self-denial! Self-congratulations are in order.” We risk imagining that, by our acts of sacrifice, we are making ourselves holier.
We forget that only the Lord can make us holier. At best, we can create environments within our souls and our lives that are especially receptive to and zealous for the operations of His grace.
Lately, the Good Lord has given me a lot of reminders of my total dependence on Him. My priest spoke beautifully to the matter in his homily this past weekend, reminding me and fellow parishioners that we are dependent upon God at every moment not only for our gifts and talents, but for our lives themselves, and that belief in self-sufficiency is one of the primary pieces in Satan’s repertoire. The question is not whether we are dependent upon God; the question is how often and with how much love we acknowledge our total dependence.
In the Gospel of John, after explaining His relationship to God the Father, Jesus emphasizes: “I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me” (Jn 6:30).
When we think about the work of Christ in the Gospels, we often think about His unbelievable power. We know that Jesus easily could have done any of the things Satan mentioned during the temptation in the desert, and this knowledge is what makes His resistance so potent. We witness Jesus lovingly interact with those He heals, having detailed conversations and embracing the sick; these healings are breathtaking in part for their intimacy, as we know that Jesus could have merely thought about a miracle and it would have taken place.
Jesus’s powers are boundless, but there is one thing He cannot do. He cannot claim independence from God. Christ can do anything, but He must do it out of, with, and by the grace of His Father. If this total dependence characterizes Christ’s existence, how much more does it characterize our own lives? How often do we remember this blessed truth and look upon it as a source – as the only source – of joy, peace and gratitude?
The more emphasis we place on our own actions during Lent, the more effortlessly we’ll wrongly assume credit for whatever goodness may flow from them. Conversely, the more we see our sacrifices not as personal goals to meet, but as daily offers to God to occupy space normally reserved for personal pleasure, the more we’ll attain the true goal of asceticism: not simply independence from our desires, but intentional dependence on God.
