Joyful Witness / Kimberly Pohovey

This Lent and beyond, never take Christ’s sacrifice for granted

Another year, another Lent. Another season of successfully or not so successfully giving something up as a sacrifice. But what if there’s another way of truly focusing on the meaning of sacrifice?

Once something in our life becomes routine, I believe it’s human nature for us to take it for granted.

Sometimes I take my family, the people I love most in this world, for granted. At times, I also take my health, job, financial security and yes, even my faith, for granted. I don’t do so out of any sense of malice, it’s just that so many aspects of my life become routine, which in turn leads me to complacency.

At Mass the week before Ash Wednesday, my pastor encouraged us to take home a postcard with the parish’s Lenten opportunities. I also picked up a Lenten prayer companion.

As I perused the Lenten offerings at my parish, I started to wonder how I can be more present during this season. Instead of giving something up for Lent, I plan to make sure I don’t take my faith for granted. And I certainly don’t want to take Jesus’ unbelievable sacrifice for granted either.

I plan to be more prayerful. I hope to attend some of the Lenten events at my parish and participate in a retreat at Our Lady of Fatima Retreat House in Indianapolis. Of course, I will fast and donate during Lent, but the single most important thing I think I can do is to have a deeper realization and appreciation that Lent leads to Christ’s death on the cross.

As the priest elevates the host during the consecration, I have started saying to myself, “Thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice and my salvation.” These sound like simple words but saying them to myself at the moment of consecration helps me to be more intentional in my understanding of what Jesus endured for me—and you.

We hear the story of the Passion of our Lord every year. But how much thought do we put into how Jesus suffered for us?

Being both God and man, he knew what was about to transpire and feared the cup of suffering he was about to withstand enough to ask our Father to spare him, if it be God’s will. Though innocent of sin himself, he walked willingly to his death to save all of humanity from our sins. He endured scorn, brutal torture and finally, execution on the cross.

I remember when The Passion of the Christ movie was released years ago. My small Christian community at church gathered to view it together. The intense and extremely graphic passion scenes depicted in the movie left me completely overwhelmed. I wept watching Jesus being tortured, maybe for the first time truly understanding the depth of the agony he experienced—for me, for us.

So, I will keep all the traditional Lenten observances centered around prayer, fasting and almsgiving. But this year, I will focus more intentionally on my gratitude for Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice and never again take it for granted.
 

(Kimberly Pohovey is a member of Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ Parish in Indianapolis. She is the director of major and planned gifts for the archdiocese.) †