One year during Lent, as I was writing my doctoral dissertation in stolen moments while mothering two toddlers, I gave up precisely 10 minutes each day to take a nap. It was probably the most meaningful Lent I’ve experienced. Some might be skeptical about whether napping qualifies as a sacrifice, but resisting the impulse to work myself to exhaustion and taking time to care for myself was indeed a way to practice freedom from life-denying habits. It was difficult—and it was glorious.
Lent is often portrayed as an opportunity to reject our sinful flesh, overcoming bodily desires for the sake of spiritual goods. But I am convinced that Lent doesn’t have to be a source of self-abasement, masochistic suffering, and pressure to conform; rather, it should move us to identify the areas of our lives in which we have not been good to ourselves or others and to offer those places healing.
Instead of reinforcing dualism, Lent should lead us more deeply into what it means to live fully in our bodies, here and now. It should move us to give up the cultural pressures of consumerism, productivity, and unattainable standards of perfection, acknowledging the ways these habits harm the web of life. We know the love of Christ encompasses all being, so extending love to those places where we feel less than whole—those places where we have participated in harm or division—is to reclaim the peace of Christ that invites us to wholeness.
In her poem “Breathing Peace,” Cristina M. R. Norcross captures the need for this approach: “We have always been at peace,” she writes, “but we become lost in the forgetting.” But if we have always been at peace—if we are intended to be whole—what is it that causes this forgetting? What could have possibly drawn our original ancestors away from peace and the wholeness of God’s love? What was the lure capable of turning them from perfection, when they could have chosen otherwise?
Insofar as Lent is a time to renew our baptismal promises in expectation of the grace that removes original sin, it is an apt time for exploring our human origin story to gain some insights.
In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve, while living in perfect harmony with each other and the world, make a choice that fatally disrupts their peace and that of humanity through the ages. While we often interpret their original sin as disobedience—God said “don’t eat from that tree,” and they did—it is possible to imagine the story afresh.
We know now that all life has evolved from the same source. Our bodies hold elements of stardust; 99 percent of our DNA is shared with animals. We know, too, that our interconnection is not only biological, but ecological and practical as well: The tremendous variations of life on this planet are supported within systems of mutuality that are open to growth and change. Life evolves toward increasing consciousness through ever expansive relationships. Life flourishes in mutuality, when each being gives what it can and receives what is offered from others. Most creatures simply do this naturally; human beings must choose whether or not to embody the awareness that, as Pope Francis writes in Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home), “all creatures are connected [and] each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.”
In Adam and Eve’s sin, we see the choice to demand more than what is needed or offered, we see the theft of fruit that was not given, and we see them eat it out of a sense of entitlement, not gratitude, deceived by the thought that the world was humanity’s for the taking. By prioritizing their own desires and using their power to dominate and control their relationships, our original ancestors disrupted the mutuality that sustains the web of life. The subsequent legacy of exile from the Earth is precisely this desire for overreach, embodied in humanity and our patriarchal, consumeristic, individualistic social systems. Even the patriarchal structure of our church stems from an interpretation of our origin story that treats Eve as the more easily deceived of the couple and Adam as automatically the more fully rational being; it also blames her for her seductive capacities, which are, of course, the downfall of Adam.
As Lent approaches, I consider some of the broken places in myself and our church that are in need of healing. I find myself struggling with the secondary role of women in the church and the part Catholics played in reelecting President Donald Trump, as well as promoting the misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist rhetoric that has recently become mainstream.
Sometimes, healing requires fasting from a harmful situation in order to reclaim our humanity. To this end, I have decided to join the movement underway, organized by Catholic Women Strike, that invites “women of the church to join us in striking from sexism by withholding time, labor, and financial resources from the church during Lent 2025.”
For me, this will look like cancelling a Sunday morning discussion group on social justice that I had planned to offer, despite believing that the class would be meaningful. At this moment, it is too painful to volunteer my time and energy to lift up the social teachings of our church, while institutionally it undermines them. I hope that this practice of fasting from the church will help me gain a sense of healthy boundaries, which will enable me to participate in the life of the church without becoming exploited.
This fast will be particularly hard. My parish community is vibrant and joyful, and it is actually one of the primary reasons I remain Catholic. Pulling back from my responsibilities there will deprive the community of good, at least in the short term. I wonder how that can that be just or life-giving.
But isn’t this precisely what the problem of original sin calls us to evaluate? The lure that pulls us away from wholeness occurs in the context of negotiating the complexities of human life and relationships. Grappling with these choices and learning to balance competing good is what it means to be human.
This Lent, then, I will nurture healing by tending gently to the hurt places, claiming freedom from oppressive patriarchal norms that define my participation in the church. I will lean into the invitation of life-giving solidarity, which leads us to mutual flourishing, knowing that my good is linked inextricably to the good of the church and the world. This Lent, I am finding my way back to peace.
This article also appears in the March 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 3, pages 23-24). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
Image: Unsplash/Annie Spratt
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