Lent is a call to conversion. Like Jonah, we tend to shirk responsibility, to run away and to board a ship that takes us far from God, from people, from our brethren and from ourselves. Lent is akin to the boatswain shouting at us, “what are you doing asleep? Rise up, call upon your God! Perhaps God will be mindful of us so that we may not perish”. To lighten the ship of our life, Lent invites us to throw the load of our sins into the sea. Maybe we have to get rid of the most precious things we hold and which are too heavy, making our journey to sanctity difficult: our pride, our self-sufficiency, a dishonest and corrupt life, our religious tepidity and indifference to the things of God, and our lack of interest towards deepening and progressing in the understanding of the Christian mysteries. Won’t it perhaps be necessary to throw overboard some friendship that threatens our religious or conjugal commitment? Won’t it perhaps be necessary to throw to the sea the works of the flesh: “immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like?”

Lent is a favourable period to relive, in an exceptional and personal way, the Exodus: that liberating journey made in the company of God and in the guidance of Moses. It is a demanding, serious and purifying journey that requires patience and lasts a lifetime. God takes time to conquer our hearts and to prepare us for the New Covenant with Him.

Lent is a time for fundamental interrogations concerning life. A time where, before God, I ask myself essential questions which must change my inner self. In truth, the invitation to change life radically, to make a U-turn and let one’s self be guided and led by God in the light of his Word is a hard one. Imagine the transformations and the profound changes that a Christian community would experience, if all its members were to mobilise for weeks all their energies and the best of their time and availability, to study the Gospel in depth and to lend an ear to what the Spirit has to say to the churches.

Lent is really the important and privileged environment where God accomplishes in us and with us this inner Exodus and transfiguration, which he provides for us to truly become his adoptive children in Jesus Christ our Lord.