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As our Church enters into the desert period of its Liturgical year, I feel as though the world around me is entering into its fourth full, 365-days-a-year-tour through its own Lenten wilderness.  Much of what I thought I knew, or took for granted, has been turned upside-down, sometimes in good ways but also in bad ways.

During Lent, Christians know there is a journey ahead, but we also know we are headed into a certain celebration of life, light, and resurrection.  We see the light ahead and knowing this makes the metaphorical journey through the desert easier to endure, but our real-life destination as a planet is less visible to me.

Perhaps your Lenten practices are heroic, but I’ve learned I do not always succeed with vast Lenten proclamations. 

What does your desert look like this year?  Deserts are dry, hot, desolate places which are inhospitable to life.  I believe these places exist within each of us, but am I brave enough to recognize where they are and visit them and the chaos they entail?

Which demons will you wrestle this Lent?  My list is too long and uninteresting, but this Lent I will seek evidence of God in places where I see only despair and the absence of love.  Children’s television host Mr. Roger’s said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news…my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”  I understand he intended it as advice for pre-schoolers dealing with scary situations on television, but it is also suitable advice for adults in 2023.   I also need to wrestle with those times I forget my connectedness to God, to others, and to creation.

What angels will attend to you this Lent?  When I lived at my parent’s house my mother had what resembled a large, decorative, glittery, cloth ribbon affixed to the large mirror in the living room.  I do not know when it appeared or how long it was there.  In my mind it resembled an elaborate bow that someone would use to decorate a Christmas gift, so I catalogued it in my brain as a Christmas decoration.  I vaguely wondered why the decoration remained up 365 days a year, but I grew accustomed to it and rarely thought of it. 

Then one random day I looked at the bow and saw it differently.  It was an angel…a big, glittery craft-Angel, but definitely an angel, nonetheless.  Nothing about the decoration had changed, but something in my perspective had.  I didn’t tell anyone.  How could I possibly have been blind to that object that I saw nearly every day of my life?  I will just pretend that never happened, who has to know?   Maybe this is how angels appear and attend to us, without our noticing.  You need to watch out for angels, they’re sneaky like that.

So, as we “sit in the ashes of Lent” searching, praying, and attending to those in need, may we grow in faith, and in hope and may each of us emerge from the desert transformed.

Trevor Droesbeck
Archdiocese of Moncton
Office for Evangelization and Catechesis