Being a cradle Catholic, for me Lent has a familiar rhythm. Ashes and resolute aspirations starting off the season. Stumbling sometime through the third, fourth, and fifth weeks. Scrambling with some extra prayers and confessions before Passiontide. My penances are also surprisingly similar year-over-year, although their effects are different.

Lent is not about self-improvement, as our therapeutic culture sees it. It is about fighting for God’s presence in our lives. There is a difference between preparing ourselves for the coming of the Lord in His sacred mysteries and making ourselves better. We Catholics in America too often treat Lent like a spiritual opportunity to renew new year’s resolutions. Easily we pray, fast, and give alms to prove to ourselves we can do something hard and by our merits can make ourselves better persons.

In this struggle I’ve found what I do more important than why I do it. Cards on the table (and not for self-praise): most of my penances involve small acts only I see and I know about—turning the radio off in the car; eliminating milk in my coffee; frequenting my favorite websites less; abstaining from desserts; cutting back from my favorite biblical beverages. Almost all of these penances I am guaranteed, 100 percent, to cheat on. But that is part of the point.

The why I am doing it simply isn’t important. Focusing too much on the why leads me to place my intentions and my goals at the center of Lent. The struggle for a pure intention leads to impure motives that elevate the journey and struggle over the destination. God is the One to Whom I wish to continually turn to in repentance and in prayer.

Turning the Heart and Mind

What I am doing is giving myself little reminders in my day to turn my heart and mind to God in prayer. All these abstentions prick at different hours. And as I feel my desires for the small earthly consolations, I try to turn my heart and mind to prayer, to actually listening to the Lord. Even my stumbles are an opportunity to turn to the Lord. In both success and failures, my penance returns me to the Lord.

And this focus on the Lord becomes a prayer because I am reminded through the various pin-prick penances to talk with Him. Because this prayer becomes the focus of Lent, each season is different because I am continually trying to listen to the whispering voice of the Lord. This leaves me insecure because I cannot easily measure myself against an “I did it” in observing my Lenten penance. Lent should make one a better person, but the final result is much obscured to my eyes.

This constant turn towards the Lord seems the essence of the Lord’s call to “come and follow me.” I would rather spend this Lent building that relationship than trying to win my own personal Catholic olympics.

Mattias A. Caro is the Executive Editor of Ethika Politika.