The Poverty of Lent Amidst the Heat of Summer

Joan reflects on how the Lenten retreat provides an important starting point for her today.

My life of late has been very intense. I am trying to change jobs, I constantly struggle to take good care of myself, and I am wrestling with God and my identity. I have always been overly self critical, and am now aware of how much I compare myself to others. Funnily enough, much of this seemed to begin back in Lent, and so I keep coming back to my local Communion and Liberation Lenten Retreat, and how what I learned then has helped me face what I am living now.

Based on the 2024 Fraternity Exercises on Hope by Bishop Paccosi, and led by Fr. Jon Fincher, our Lenten Retreat focused on the progression of hope to poverty and on to mission. It was altogether a beautiful lesson, but what struck me then and remains with me now was our discussion on poverty. I previously saw poverty as a negative, an emptiness, but in his lesson Fr. Jon explained poverty more fully (and more inspiring to me) as a trust that God truly is providing in every moment, woven into a receptive and grateful heart.

And so to my heartache comes the opportunity to see it as my poverty. Whatever I feel about myself and whatever I am facing, God has given me everything I need in this present moment. From there I have noticed a greater call to gratitude. This I recognize as grace, because it is beyond my own human weakness. Further, not a week goes by that I don’t see the theme of poverty reaffirmed in our weekly School of Community reading or discussion.

I am not totally healed. I am still struggling today; I even put off writing this again and again. But I decided to write, still hurting, as a testament of how poverty is helping me live.

Joan, Tulsa