THE PURPOSE OF LENT

one of the purposes of Lent is most particularly that we're able to go out into the desert with our water for 40 days and 40 nights and prepare our souls for death and resurrection, because that is what it comes down to as you boil it down to the most simple possible analogy. But what does that mean going to the desert? Well, they're the people who would go on to the desert, would do two things specifically. They would go out into the desert to purify themselves and then go out into the desert, ask for forgiveness, for sins. Those are the two reasons, principally, but the first step for going out into the desert is always going to be in search of silence where you work outside the desert. There was the risk of finding somebody. There was the risk of running into somebody. There was a city, there was a town, there was interaction, and so therefore there was noise. People would go into the desert to search for silence. And that is the first thing that we do in land. We learn to silence our minds, silence our senses, silence our archetypes, silence our desires to silence what we want when we think about the things that cause us, turbulence and turmoil within our souls to silence all of this. It is the silence of somebody who is searching for God. Because we don't go to the desert, we don't go into land just simply because we love suffering. Anybody who loves suffering is a masochist. And as a mental illness, we go into the desert knowing that we will suffer, knowing that there is deprivation, knowing that there is pain. But we do it because we are looking for something more profound and more perfect. Be those seeking in the desert for silence. The silence that we seek is the silence of the presence of God. So the first step in any land is always going to be to turn this off our head, our brain, our minds. Now, that sounds easy. Believe it or not, we always think that any idiot can turn off their minds. But actually, no. It's people who have serious mental discipline, who are able to silence their minds. Silence of mental silence only comes through lots of practice and through lots of discipline. So every last one of us that has gray in our hair should know something about that, right? Unfortunately, no, we don't. Every year we have to start over again. Every Lent, we need to start over again. So first we start with silence. So how do we find silence in the desert? First of all, what is that silence? It isn't just the shutting off of everything because it's not inactivity. It is an action in and of itself. The pursuit of the voice of God. It is an action by which we do not listen to the noise of the world. We ignore the turbulence of our own souls, the fears and anxieties that we have. It is a silence by which we try to separate ourselves as much as possible from ourselves. Sounds paradoxical, but all it is is just simply. If you understand that the noise that we breathe into our own lives needs to be put away. That could be a popular activity. That can be that. The news of the day. It could be our own internal voice, the internal monologue that we have with ourselves constantly. It could be our emotions. Our fears and frustrations. We all have these things and that's not a bad thing to have. So not bad in and of themselves. Why? Because God himself gave us emotions to help and encourage us to be able to overcome difficulties and to achieve happiness. That is what heroes. So therefore they are useful. The problem is they generate an awful lot of noise because we do not have them under control. We do not have them disciplined. So now we need to discipline them, strap them down, calm them down, and start to ignore them. Again, it's not something that we just do. Like we turn on a light switch, that is. It takes effort. It takes labor. And it takes making and forming certain connections and certain using certain intellectual muscles that we're not used to using. So now we need to start practicing with that. How do we do that? Well, first and foremost, we stop letting in so much garbage from the outside. That is one of the big things. People go out into the desert specifically because there's nobody else there. The only sounds are the sounds of nature. Nobody else is there. So that is the first step. If we are searching for silence, it is always going to start with get away from the noise that comes into our lives all the time. So there are certain restrictions that we put down, how much Internet usage we have, how much time in front of the screen we have, how much time, water, phone, how much time we have to deal with other people. That kind of noise coming in on our lives is one of the first things that we must start doing restrictions on. Now, we're not desert fathers. We cannot possibly shut ourselves away completely. We cannot ignore the world's completely rejects. Turn off the Internet completely. What would that be? Nice once in a while. But we can't do that entirely, unfortunately, because that's just the world we live in. But we can start to restrict how much access the outside world has to us. How do we do that? The first way, of course, is the most obvious for certain times of the day, where the world has no point of access to the. So you see at night now there's a lot of reasons for this physical health reasons, any sort of other reasons. It's a good thing that after a certain time of night, you shut the world out, turn off your phone, wandered away, keep it out of your bedroom, whatever you need to do. Don't bring too much of the world into your purview. Your. Your, your life. Use the night time specifically to read, to pray, to prepare yourself for sleep, to follow a specific ritual that will help you sleep. One of the most common problems in our world right now is insomnia. Why is that? Because when other things. We're not sleeping well. We have too much going on all the time. And people don't, actually. Start any sort of a ritual to help them sleep, any sort of a ritual form of activity to be able to sleep. Now for us, that's an easy thing. 8:00 at night, turn off the phone. Put it away. Seriously, do some reading. Start spending a little time together as a family, play a cricket board game or something. Something simple for trauma, whatever it is. 9:00. You know, start preparing yourselves for that whenever that ritual particularly means for your families. Then by 1030, you're you're saying your night prayers. And you know, I did that. In bed. It's not a bad idea to have your rosary on top of your cell phone or your alarm clock or whatever else to make sure that that is the first thing you feel in the morning. It's good to have certain little rituals and things that you do to prepare yourself for a good night's sleep. Always remind yourself your guard needs. Need to always be sure that the rosary is next to you, if not in your head, whatever it may be. But the idea is specifically put at times to put the world out of your home, out of your mind, out of your soul, and start putting these other things out. That winding down time is actually very important and using that as a specific example because it's probably the most healthy time for us to start shoving the world out. There's always times saving time to do that right off the bat for the time that we get up, let's say 530 in the morning or 6:00 or whatever, I don't know. And we've got everybody's personal situation from that time until we go to work or get in the car or whatever it is that we have to do in the morning. We should not be accessing the Internet. Now, fortunately, I think we can all realize that the world, the very first thing they do upon waking up is check their phone. That is a start for us. Why? First theme of our day. The first action of our day, coast to coast. And because if we are wasting our time with video games or cell phones or international whatever else, we are not getting anything positive done. And we have a lot to do before we have to actually get to our place of work, before we have to accomplish something for the day in which we are supposed to be serving God. So therefore, that is the second point of silence. Okay, first of the morning, Saturday night, that's where we start showing the world out and focusing on specifically what is the will of God from the here and now. If we focus on just those two points of silence, I think we can find a huge improvement in just being able to appreciate the tranquil, peaceful voice of God morning and night. But that's not enough. Those are the two most important moments. Show me. So those are the foundation stones of being able to establish a habitual silence in our souls. Silencing the outset outside noise is great, but that's not the primary enemy. That is just the first step to be able to confront the real enemy of silence, which is our own hands. That is the real enemy of silence right there. Because the world can scream and make noise, but we can choose to listen to it or not. There's a lot of noise out there, but it's up to us to sense, to listen to it or say, No, I have better things to do. And even when I know that the world isn't making noise, even we've isolated ourselves completely from the world. So we go in retreat. We still bring a lot of noise with us wherever we go. Our imaginations are very powerful machines. Our minds are noisy machines. Has anyone ever worked next to a jackhammer? It's not fun. These are loud noise. But that's our way. It is a constant noise. Constant noise. And that's partly because that's how God created us. Because our mind is supposed to be an active and powerful machine for the purpose of being able to fine tune in any situation. Which means we need to be able to utilize our mind. Our mind needs to be strong and it needs to be active and it needs to be fertile. Which means pagination needs to be. Cultivate and encourage. The problem is soul disorder itself is out of whack. So now we need to bring it back into control. So the second step, the first step is establishing timely science. The second step, as important just as important as the first step, is now silencing the inner voice. And this is most specifically, this doesn't have to be all the time necessarily, although that would be wonderful. But just to start our lives at the moments of prayer, first performing this morning in the evening prayers, daily rosary meditation, spiritual reading, things like that. Those are the moments where we have to calm our mind down. Now, this is a little bit more slippery because this is where the question of distractions come in. Just a little heads up. Distraction of prayer is not necessarily a sin. It's only when it's voluntarily or provoked by us personal intention and put out fires. Distraction is made. Natural happens. It is a state by which in which we are born. The wound of original sin has created that. It is caused a problem. That means that our mind is discombobulated all the time. That is just how it is. And so every day we are going to struggle to keep our attention where it needs to be. And that was part of the problems of school and from pounds of work. That is part of the problems of daily conversations as part of the problems with every little aspect of our lives. But there's one place we need to focus on that distraction, and that is in prayer. That of all things. Why? Because we are in the presence of God as a first step at the essential steps to prayer. We put ourselves in the presence of God. He is there. He's waiting for us, like in the Eucharist, which is waiting to rest, encourage the construction or imagination of the sanctuary of an altar where we can go to pray. Some necessary but good idea. Because when we imagine the church, we imagine it's happened to be the better idea of God or the sitting there waiting for us to come and adore him, because that is what is going on with us to increase in our souls. So that's the first thing. Create a place in your mind where no other noise is allowed. They could make it this very altar in this very chapel. It could make it a place that you do with love. You could make it to a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere. Make it whatever you want. It doesn't have to be a place at all. It can just be what you know is what is in your soul. Does it have to? You also mentioned it's just sometimes easier if our imagination has something to grab on to. Of create a place in your own mind, in your own soul, in your imagination, whatever it is that you know God is present and that no other noise is allowed, and then you reach an act of will. I will listen, not speak. I just say that you don't have to vocalize with. Sometimes it helps, but you're going to make an act of the will saying This time is not for me to speak. It is not for me to say it. It is really until this little act of discipline actually creates a tremendous amount of help. And then we go inside go inside that place. And then we just let God work. I remember something was very beautiful, very difficult to imagine, but also perfectly true. But we are in a state of grace, sanctifying grace at that moment. We are part of the intimate, internal life of God herself. The procession of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost were perfect at recognition and love between three persons of the Boston Trinity. We're stuck in that movement. We are actually part and parcel of it. That is what is going on in our soul, called the father and the son. Consciously. Just perfectly understanding and loving each other perfectly. Absolutely. And at that very moment, within our soul, that is what grace is, is eternal life, like God himself activated in our own soul. There he is. And that is what our prayer is a part of that we pray. You're part of that work of the Blessed Trinity, going out within our own soul. So sometimes it helps us to understand that it's not about us. Our prayer is not about us. It is about what he is doing and us just being a part of it. Not even a witness, but an actual real part of it. Find a way to just be in all of the facts that we are able to be consciously in the presence of God. That we are part of this world. That we are part of his redemption. Part of his creation. Part of his grace. Part of his life. Find something that inspires you in that. Or maybe it's a scene from the Gospels, or maybe it's from lead or anything else that has something of God in it. So when you come into that sanctuary in your mind. You have a point of focus and it could just be excuse their presence see in your sole president, but have that point of focus. And that is going to be their entire focus. Nothing else. You can say prayers in your morning offering. You can say your prayers and your rosary. You can say whatever else needed just the prayers before meals. But may that be the first step. That silence has got to be the first step. The vocal cords, you say, do not interrupt the silence in your mind. That is why there is the ritual. That is why we have them memorize so we don't have to think about it. We can say none of those beautiful to think about what's the word that should be held or meditations. But we say that as a mantra to keep our mind occupied so that we can focus on the essential prayer, which is the presence of God Himself. That is how we will practice absolute silence. That is the silence of contemplation. So first, shut up to the world. We shut them out. We close it off. Seconds. We start by creating a sanctuary in our own soul, a place where we know God is and where we can go. And third, we put all of our focus on one essential point, which is going to lead us to the contemplation of God. Any point that those three elements will give us a sense. But the sense of God, the sadness of the desert where he can be heard, we can finally understand or we can be guidance and courage, but we can learn the gift of tears. We can perceive ourselves as he perceives us. We can do so much. And it all starts with silence. Well, again, this is exhausting. This is why I don't encourage long term meditation, encourage everybody to do an hour of meditation a day if you're already at that point. Good on you. But for the most part, by talking about the little sessions of prayer. 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Much more. Maybe just spending a rosary, but again, we'll be distracted. Distractions will come. What was that noise? Why the silence of playing with their fingers again? But those of you with little kids knows exactly how attentive you can be during a family grocery. It's a way. But did you have that experience? Where is that part of you that many external distractions? It's that much more important to find those 510 minutes alone with God in the beginning. The day at the end of the day, being in the middle of the day doesn't matter so much when. But you must have that type of homework. The science piece. Those are the first steps. That is the first science we must address. The second is the silence that comes along after. Which is the silence of everything being in order. This is the natural effect of our daily offering. Where do we say the words of the daily offering? We know that we are offering ourselves completely to God in the same way that our Lord Jesus Christ, our son, spoke to His Father in the mass and in Union with that same sacrifice. That is what we are trying to do. But that also means that we are putting our entire lives in order for all things are life itself is a simple means to an end. To know love and served up. That is it? We are accepting that. We're embracing it and we are actively going to pursue that. That is the silence of absolute order. Too close to find peace as the tranquility of order. When everything is in this place, every creature is doing its bidding according to God's will. When every scene is asked God and wants it to be, then there will be peace. The peace we want in our souls starts with that. First we get the piece of small, the piece of recollection, the piece of contemplation. And then we start to order everything. Our day. These are things. Her intentions before then according to how God wants them and not how we think they should be. We do that like in silence to ourselves, surrendering things, abandoning ourselves to His providence. penance and contrition. Those two things,