Love's Response

Lent is upon us. And as I’ve been praying about how the Lord is inviting me to prepare for Easter this year, I keep returning to a conversation I recently had with one of our neighbors in Harlem.

Lucia is one of our neighborhood saints. Every Saturday, while we serve a hot meal at our Father Solanus Soup Kitchen, we have the church next to our convent open for Adoration. And you can always count on Lucia being there, praying from her usual pew.

This week, because of the cold, we decided to have prayer available just at the beginning in our little convent chapel. It was a beautiful experience seeing the entire chapel filled with our neighbors praying and praising the Lord!

Afterwards, the group headed down to the main dining area for lunch. Lucia, however, continued to linger. We invited her to join for a meal, but she insisted that she wouldn’t eat and needed to take the meal to go. We generally try to have our guests sit down for the meal because the food is really a means to something deeper. But she explained that she was going to Mass later and wasn’t eating until afterwards. How could you say “no” to that?

She was, however, happy to sit down for a beverage.

Over my lunch and her coffee, she shared in more detail how she was spending her day. When she left her apartment that morning she told the Lord, “Today is for You.” She came to our convent to pray and afterwards was going to spend her afternoon at a nearby church for the “150 Hail Mary’s” and then Mass. “I can’t step aside and say ‘this meal is for me,’ you see? That’s why I won’t eat [until this evening]. Today is for the Lord.” 

It didn’t matter that the Church only asks us to fast for 1 hour before receiving the Eucharist, or that her age would exempt her from that requirement anyway. She wasn’t fasting to meet a guideline, but was truly living the heart of penance: she was cultivating space in her heart to encounter her Savior.

We recently had a discussion at the novitiate about the Franciscan understanding of penance. Now, when I think of “penance” my mind tends to go toward hairshirts, cold showers, and extreme degrees of fasting. And it is true that St. Francis did practice these external penances to a heroic degree. But when he spoke about it and encouraged his friars to practice penance, he was speaking about something deeper. His understanding of penance was

“primarily in the sense of gospel Metanoia, which literally implies a change of mind, the complete and unceasing renewal of a man who tends to God with all his being” (Love’s Reply, 2).

Penance, for Francis, was simply the response of a grateful heart from one who had encountered the Love of the Father.

The more we receive this love, the more we desire to give our own gift in return. Of course we have nothing in comparison that we can give Him. And yet, our attention and surrender to receive more of His love is all He really desires. God is both the source and fulfillment of all our hearts desire. And the more we receive of Him, the less the things of this world hold any claim on our attention. God alone delights our hearts, and the natural response is for us to seek to please Him in return.

This was the kind penance I encountered with Lucia.

If you speak with her for more than 30 seconds, you’ll know God is the center of her life. She has the kind of faith that you know has been tested and found true. And the fruit is beautiful.

Some people may not understand why a little old woman living in the projects in East Harlem would choose to add more “suffering” to her life. But I don’t think she looks at it that way. She knows just how precious a gift this life is, and she knows that gift is from God. She’s simply saying “thank you” in return.

Each Lent, the Church invites us to take a step deeper into the life of penance. Not to hyperfocus on our faults, but rather to be intentional about cultivating space for our Savior. Christ died for our sins. But He died in our place so that our relationship with the Father might be restored. Love was the motive.

The Father is calling each one of us to a deeper relationship with Him this Lent.

The question is, how am I going to respond?  

Sr. Damian, CFR Novice