Lenten Tripod

Not too often you hear the words "Lent" and "tripod" put together, but it was a concept I introduced a few weeks back to my CCD students.

So often you hear "What are you giving up for Lent?"  I wanted them to understand that this wasn't a futile repeat of New Year's resolutions.  Lent is a time for sacrifice. 

One of my favorite quotes about sacrifice is this:

Love transforms suffering into sacrifice.

According to this, two things must be present for a sacrifice:  Love and Suffering.

So for Lent, while they were all trying to figure out what they'd "give up," I asked them to also figure out a specific person or intention they'd be offering that sacrifice for.  Giving up candy bars during Lent is great, but if you're just substituting the candy bars with milkshakes, nothing is accomplished.

Instead, if you give up candy bars, use the $.60 you save every day and donate it to the homeless man you pass on the street each day.  Put it into a piggy bank and at the end of Lent, use it to buy your little sister that iPad app she's been dying to try.  Better yet, secretly use it to buy a slew of your favorite prayer cards / medals and leave them in the back of your parish church for parishioners to share!

Little things add up, and as long as they're adding up to love, they're perfect sacrifices for Lent.

With that in mind, my students started coming up with some great ideas:

• I'll sacrifice [Popular TV Show] and use that extra time to help my Mom clean the house
• I'll sacrifice gossiping in school and try really hard to befriend [a particular girl] instead
• I'll sacrifice the $1.00 I'm given for school and put it towards the Rice Bowl collection
• I'll sacrifice 1 recess per week and use that time to pray for Father ____________

These are my favorites.  It took a lot of leading, but when they finally arrived at their Lenten gifts (as I've been calling them), I think they really understood the purpose behind the practice.

Once they got this foundation set, I tied it together through Jesus.

We give up things, or sacrifice, for our community out of love.  However, we don't do that for ourselves.  We do it through Jesus.  We unite our sufferings with Jesus' Passion.  We don't sacrifice during Lent just because that's what you do during Lent.  We do it so Jesus doesn't have to suffer alone.  We share the burden with Him.  

I likened it to riding a roller coaster for the first time.  They all seemed to understand that. None of them wanted to ride a coaster by themselves the first time they went.  They were scared!  Instead, they asked a friend to come along so they could share the burden of fear.

During Lent, we consent to share the burden of suffering with Jesus.  We consent to take part in the Passion, because as the Church, we are members of His Body, and we want to follow where He, the Head, leads us.  During Lent, He is leading us to Salvation through the Cross.  

It was like a little light bulb clicked over their heads.  I started seeing them slowly understanding the concept of sharing in the Lenten journey.  Each Mass isn't a recreation of the Passion so much as a time-machine that brings us back to the Foot of the Cross, time and time again.  Lent helps us refocus on this by bringing the reality of Christ's Sacrifice into our daily lives (in a much more manageable way).  

Just as Christ suffered for love of us, we, too, must suffer for love of others, uniting those sacrifices to the Sacrifice of Christ.  

This is the Lenten Tripod analogy I used with my students, and I have to say, I'm really pleased with how well they took that lesson to hear.

Next week we'll check in to see how they're doing with their gifts.  :) 

---