Lent Feels Impossible? LISTEN TO THIS (with Fr Cristino)

Does Lent feel impossible right now? You're not alone. In this inspiring conversation, Father Cristino shares practical advice and encouragement for staying faithful and persevering during Lent—even when self-denial and sacrifices seem overwhelming.

Transcript

Father Cristino welcome back thank you hey so uh we're going to talk about self-discipline today and uh I know that there's something in your personal life that you've been doing called Exodus 90 that requires a little bit of self discipline yes sir how's it going well I'm still alive no cream in this coffee just so that everyone knows i'm I'm following the rules it's been good i'm very very grateful that uh some men in my parish uh put the idea on my on my radar to do it i've done it before i did it once with some friends of mine uh I think in 2019 and so it just seemed like it was overdue and I and I felt like it was a really good way for me to also prepare myself for the Jubilee year so with Exodus 9 if people are not familiar with it can you just walk through some of the disciplines because it really does tie into a lot of self-denial doesn't it yeah exactly i think sometimes Exodus 90 gets reduced to the disciplines and I think that's a bit to its detriment everyone just knows about the cold showers no snacking no sweets uh no uh alcohol uh no cream in your coffee so it's all about all the nos but there's actually more important yeses I think but that also requires some self-denial because it means you have to structure your time in such a way that you're trying to be more generous and attentive to others uh that you're actually trying to take better care of yourself by going to bed at a decent time every night uh and then making time for fraternity among those with whom you are doing Exodus 90 in your particular small group as well as uh to take time every day for your own personal prayer uh so there are elements of Exodus 90 that are just a very ingrained part of my life already anyhow uh but the the parts of self-denial I wish were more ingrained in my day-to-day life and so it's good to have a a 90-day period of time leading up to Easter that reminds me of the importance of self-denial and and actually trying to joyfully embrace that yeah so I'm not doing Exodus 90 i've done it in the past so there is cream in my coffee here uh one of the things about Exodus 90 that I really did struggle with uh was just the cold showers and I and I did it in during a time where I was doing a lot of parish missions so most of my time during Lent at that period of my life was in the United States because I would go from parish to parish to parish doing parish missions fly home and then do another series and so what I learned about Exodus 90 and showers is that the temperature of cold showers is different depending on what state you are in and no cold shower is like a cold shower in Canada no so I think whoever came up with Exodus 90 cold shower must have been from Florida or Texas exactly that's right they they they think that it's cold but we have a different definition of groundwater temperature in Canada so when we comes to our self-denial when we deny oursel something that is good um why would we do that isn't there's this some would say there's this contradiction no not there's nothing wrong with a nice shower right it's something that God has blessed us with uh or we deny ourselves food why would a why would a good God demand us to deny ourselves good why would he want us to enjoy the blessings that he's given us mhm i don't know if I would put it that way in the same sense that he doesn't I don't know that he demands that we deny ourselves these things uh he demands just that we become perfect and we hear our lord say be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect and when we hear that we think automatically perfect means that you don't do anything wrong but that that's not the the concept that I think our Lord would have had in mind in saying that certainly in the in the language in the Greek that those words would have been first recorded in for the gospel the connotation of perfect is actually completion means being fully integrated completely intact whole uh all of what it's meant to be right so when when our lord says be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect uh god who said I am who am which means all of essence and everything is contained in him he is being itself for us to be perfect means to be all that we are meant to be that we that we ought to be and there are things in our lives that become distractions from being all that we ought to be because they lure us into becoming something else and so self-denial and discipline are ways of reminding ourselves not to become transfixed by the things that make us feel most comfortable uh because the more comfortable we become the more susceptible we are to giving way to becoming something other than what we are called to be uh when when when you're on your toes and you're being challenged and and you can't really sort of rest and melt into the the couch you you're giving space for good and and virtuous ways of living to to take hold and then we can become the saint that that we're supposed to be hm so when we talk about discipline self-denial rather um some people might object and say but it's diminishing my happiness indeed if we are attached to being I am only happy when I'm getting what I want that is not real happiness right our happiness uh St thomas Aquinus says that we are made for good and in fact he calls it the the ultimate good the sum bonum that there is there is one thing that we are ordered towards and that thing is what he calls happiness and he says that that authentic happiness can only be obtained in heaven uh so the again I don't mean to go off into these tangents about the Greek language but when our Lord in the Gospel of Matthew or all the synoptic gospels relays the biatitudes as we call them we call them that because in Latin the word he uses is biatus blessed blessed are you but from the Greek it's macarios and macarios meant happiness uh and it meant the happiness that comes from being complete from having all of what you need to make yourself whole as a human being uh not the emotion of being joyful in the moment but a disposition a stable disposition of happiness and we need to learn to also be able to become happy when things aren't going our way and when we're facing difficulty or even suffering i I always remember watching that series that Bishop Baron created the Catholicism series uh and in one of the episodes he points to a depiction of of our Lord crucified in which he looks very grotesque almost even he's nailed to the cross his his face is distorted and his body is ripped apart and Bishop Aaron said in that this is a happy man and the reason he was trying to to point out that juxtaposition to us is because our Lord was most fulfilled by doing the will of his father and that act of submitting himself to crucifixion was the way in which he knew he would accomplish the will of his father and so we can be confident that that made him happy that he was filled with joy even in the in the midst of that unimaginable nearly unbearable suffering because to do the will of the of his father was what brought him joy and so if we don't learn to find happiness even in the midst of our trials then we will go throughout life periodically being cast into devastation and you're always stopping and starting then of trying to remain stable and remain whole of becoming perfect as our heavenly father is perfect now when we come to self denial and some disciplines some would look at these practices and think that's too rigid mhm should just focus on God's mercy focus on uh your personal relationship with Jesus this all just seems too again I'll use the word rigid what would your response be to that i can remember back to my childhood sometimes having my parents say to me in a more or less threatening tone you either do this yourself or I'll do it for you and that what that meant was this is the outcome that is expected and you have the opportunity to take matters into your own hands and do it or the less pleasant uh option of me making it happen and therefore it almost like being forced upon you right i feel like that is kind of what we're being told by our father you either do this yourself or I'll do it for you and so if we don't take matters into our own hands of trying to advance in perfection and holiness but we claim to want it then in a way God is going to have to do it to us and if we practice discipline and self-denial all that we're really doing is taking the first option we're saying I will do what it takes for me to advance on this path as opposed to having to be pushed down it unwillingly uh if you want to call that rigid I just would have to completely disagree because it's an exercise of freedom when something is rigid what makes it rigid is that is that it's inflexible that it can't move but self-denial is exactly the opposite it is saying I am choosing to do something i'm choosing to submit myself to something that otherwise I I wouldn't outside of Exodus 90 it does not occur to me to have a cold shower there's no reason why I would ever think that to do that but when I freely choose to do it I am giving myself the opportunity in practicing a kind of self-denial to say "Lord please allow this to be one of the ways that I advance on this path of holiness without needing to be pushed down it." Which is the very opposite of rigid is what you're saying because you're conforming yourself you're moving yourself to to uh to do something yes someone who's rigid loses that ability right or a rigid thing loses its ability to to form to something um and isn't part of a selfdenial saying no to something not saying no for the sake of the no but it's saying no for a greater yes exactly that was why at the beginning when I talked about Exodus 90 I was trying to say that it's been reduced to the disciplines that people only know it for the cold showers and they're missing the bigger point which is what are the cold showers for what is what are all the nos at the service of and they're at the service of a much greater and more important yes which is prayer seeking union with God fraternity seeking union with each other uh for married men uh I'm in I'm in a fraternity for Exodus 90 with all married men they are they report back that this changes the way that they engage in their family life because the no to sitting and scrolling on their phone at night opens the door to sitting down at the table and playing a board game with their children uh that they that it's it's much more importantly what is the yes that comes from it not the no in itself right all of the nos are at the service of the yes so I will pour my coffee I won't I won't look and see it turn into that my beautiful cream color but as I do this we do find ourselves kneede into lent and at this point sometimes we find ourselves in our lenton observance uh tiresome burdensome and we want to give up or maybe we have fallen completely off the wagon uh I'll leave this as a closing comment what do you say to those who are just I can't do this anymore or I I give up for too much yeah whenever we when we say why keep trying if I'm just going to keep failing you have been totally duped by the enemy that's the only thing he wants us to believe uh is that if you can't do it right don't do it at all but in the practice of any form of self-denial if you're doing it in any way could it be said that you're doing it wrong could you be doing it better yes but we can do all things better we can always improve ourselves and so we we shouldn't uh give into the hopelessness or the discouragement that comes from looking around at our efforts and thinking that they bear no fruit or realizing that I I lack all motivation to keep trying to do this any better than I have been we instead we need to say I know I could do this better and so tomorrow I'm going to try to and if I can the slightest little bit then that's all that was needed from me but Lent is only going to you only get from Lent what you put into it uh and if it is meant to be the way in which we prepare ourselves to properly rejoice over our Lord's resurrection then I think it's worth putting as much into it as we can so don't give up and keep on persevering thanks for the encouragement for those of us who feel like giving up don't give up Ken you can do it hey uh thanks for watching today please comment below what stood out to you and why and once again we'll end this episode with a prayer thanks