Why Lent?

Essentially, everything proceeds from Love and tends towards Love. God’s gratuitous love is made known to us through the proclamation of the Gospel. If we welcome it with faith, we receive the first and indispensable contact with the Divine, capable of making us “fall in love with Love”, and then we dwell within this Love, we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others.

These words from the Holy Father's recent Lenten message remind us that all that we try to do during Lent must lead to love. Love is the only reason for any effort at additional prayer, fasting and almsgiving. As monks we always try to remember that all of our Lenten efforts are appropriate and useful only if they make us more loving.

Photograph by Charles O'Connor.