If you are anything like me, you might be experiencing what I would call the doldrums of Lent. I’ve gotten used to my Lenten sacrifice and it’s not so hard anymore. I can never get used to fish, but I’ve gotten used to meatless Friday. I expect to see purple on Sundays, and reflecting on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is routine. We’ve had enough weeks to settle into a rhythm and things are feeling comfortable again.
However, one of the most uncomfortable parts of Lent is how it invites us to look intentionally at the Passion of Christ. We are pushed to remember how he suffered in his final hours out of love for us.
One way to walk with Jesus through his sufferings is to pray the Stations of the Cross. You can see the 14 stations around the perimeter of most churches. The Stations of the Cross provide a beautiful opportunity to walk with Jesus from the time he was condemned to death until his body was laid in the tomb.
When I think about walking with Jesus during his Passion, I find that, for me, it is easier to think about the different people who actually walked with him: Mary, Simon, Veronica, Joseph of Arimathea and others.
Instead of turning away from the ugly reality of the capacity that people have for evil, they turned and looked directly at it. And by looking at it, they saw the face of the greatest good, the highest love.
It makes me think about the people who I might be called to walk with and the ugliness that I might be avoiding because it makes me uncomfortable. In his first apostolic exhortation, “Evangelii Gaudium” (“The Joy of the Gospel”), Pope Francis reminds us that in order to evangelize, we must be missionary disciples: people who both sit at the feet of Jesus learning from him and people who go out into the world.
During Lent, we should consider who we might be called to walk with and how we should look at them, love them, and help them to carry their burdens.
In prayer, we can lift their concerns and troubles to the Lord, but first we must get to know them and learn why they suffer.
In fasting, we learn what it means to want and what it means to be uncomfortable, but we must consider the things that make us comfortable and be honest with ourselves about where we need to be challenged.
In almsgiving, we do what we can to ease the sufferings of others, but we should be thoughtful about the needs of our community so that we are giving intentionally instead of making assumptions.
Each of these requires that we go outside of our comfort zones and challenge ourselves to look at suffering in its face.
When I think about those who showed compassion to Jesus, I also think about how, as Christians, we are called not only to show love, but to receive it. I consider how the humiliated and suffering Jesus accepted the love and care that was shown to him during his Passion.
Each one of us experiences pain and suffering in our lives, and sometimes we react by pushing people away, or denying that we are suffering and trying to make ourselves feel invulnerable and independent.
We can also get so focused on surviving our ordeal that we forget to look for the small acts of love that people show us every day. Jesus shows us another way: accept the love that others show us in imitation of his own humility.
The practice of praying the Stations of the Cross is not meant to make us sad or cause us to feel guilty. The Stations remind us that what we do matters. Our sins matter and the ways that we imitate Christ and those who showed him compassion also matter.
It can be easy to grow comfortable during Lent and forget to look suffering in the face; when we forget to look at suffering, we miss an opportunity to see pure love.
If you are like me and have gotten comfortable this Lent, I encourage you to pray the Stations and look at love embodied and walk with him as he gives everything for love of you.
Laura LaClair has worked for the Diocese of Richmond since 2016 and has served as Associate Director for Campus Ministry since 2021. She is a graduate of William & Mary and St. Joseph’s College in Maine. In her free time, she likes to knit, crochet, and spend time outdoors with her family.