I had a pleasant chat with my spiritual director this morning. He has been very busy during the Lenten season and has wanted to talk with me about some questions I had, but his duties took precedence over a silly old sinner who is still struggling to get his life straightened out.

What precipitated this call was a discussion we had by Email about two weeks ago when I was staring Lent in the face. Since I joined the Byzantine Catholic Church in 2001, I have never particularly liked Lent. I don’t like it because I don’t much care for fasting.  In the Email from two weeks ago, Father Elias asked me why I don’t like fasting.  My answer was straight and to the point – I like to eat. He sent me an “LOL” by return Email, then made some additional comments which I have been thinking about.

One of those comments has to do with how busy I am all the time. Let’s see – I have a very sick wife who needs care, I am a Knight of Columbus with duties as the Committee Chairman for the Life Committee, I do the service instructions for my parish, looking up the proper tones and words for worship, then typing them up and printing them up, I teach 6th grade CCD classes at my wife’s Roman Catholic parish, and I have a small business I run out of my house, fixing up industrial cleaning equipment such as floor buffers. Knowing all this, Father Elias suggested that I look at the overall view of my life and ask myself what I might cut out for Lent. His sense, after discussing Lent with me, is that I get frustrated because I have no one to cook Lenten meals for me (Roman Catholics do not do Lent the way Eastern Catholics do) and therefore, the addition of shopping, label reading at the store, (no meat, eggs, or dairy until Pascha), and finding time to make myself a meal, is why I don’t like Lent.

Could be. I have to admit that it becomes kind of frustrating when I find something at the store that I think is “Lenten Friendly” and then, when I get it home, find out that it has milk in it as one of the ingredients, or eggs as a binder. That’s been my experience over the years, and it is pretty annoying.

I’ve also had another issue with Lent which is part of my “bigger spiritual picture.” I have tended to overdo it or to be frustrated because I failed to observe it perfectly. You see, I tend to be a very black/white person in my life, and within that, a perfectionist. I’ve talked with Father Elias about this and we both know that this perfectionism comes from my lack of any sort of warm and supportive relationship with my father.  As I grew up, I began to be more and more demanding of myself, hoping that some sort of perfect action on my part would elicit a hug and a warm statement of support from him.

Never happened.

Not once. My father died without ever saying “I love you” to me. Hard to believe, but true. Later on, I came to understand that he had his own issues, his own inner demons which made him the man he was, but that was much later in my life, and by that time, the perfectionist streak within me was well established. This, in turn, created in my a warped picture of my heavenly Father, God, as being equally demanding. Hence, the need to do Lent perfectly, with no flaws, no mistakes, no failures!

But this year, it is somehow different. I’ve broken the strict Fast three times already and we are only a week into it. But as I told Father Elias, I’m not going to get upset about it this year. Instead, I’m going to do what St. Therese of Lisieux did – instead of trying to offer to God a perfect Lenten fasting observance, I am going to look at each day as an opportunity to do a “little act of love to God.” And if I fail, I will forgive myself, pick myself up, and try again tomorrow.

Father Elias was quiet for a while after I told him this, then said to me, “You seem to be really at peace today. I’m happy for you.” Yes, in fact, I am at peace, for as I told him, I am learning that God loves me unconditionally. If I try and fail, His love does not change. If I try and succeed, He doesn’t love me more than He already does. Somehow, for the first time in my life, in 20 years of being in the Catholic faith, I feel a real peace about this Lent.

Today has been good. Breakfast and lunch were easy to make and within the guidelines. I don’t feel this sense of condemnation hanging over me that I used to feel.

I think I am going to enjoy Lent this year.