What are you busy doing?
How have you been? Busy. This is such a common reply that we often fail to recognize that being busy is not a virtue. Neither is it an answer to how we are living. It is simply a shorthand answer for justifying our existence. After all, if we have been busy, we have been, well, busy doing "things". Our God is interested in what we are busy doing. All of our work might be completely interior. In fact that is what Lent calls us to do, begin to work on our interior life. Then from within will flow the works to which we have been called.
St. Josemaria
wrote
We are at the beginning of Lent: a time of penance, purification and conversion. It is not an easy program, but then Christianity is not an easy way of life. It is not enough just to be in the Church, letting the years roll by. In our life, in the life of Christians, our first conversion — that unique moment which each of us remembers, when we clearly understood everything the Lord was asking of us — is certainly very significant. But the later conversions are even more important, and they are increasingly demanding. To facilitate the work of grace in these conversions, we need to keep our soul young; we have to call upon our Lord, know how to listen to him and, having found out what has gone wrong, know how to ask his pardon…
What better way to begin Lent? Let’s renew our faith, hope and love. The spirit of penance and the desire for purification come from these virtues. Lent is not only an opportunity for increasing our external practices of self denial. If we thought it were only that, we would miss the deep meaning it has in christian living, for these external practices are — as I have said — the result of faith, hope and charity. (Christ is Passing By, 57)
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