Leila Marie Lawler would make anyone’s short list of wise women alive today, and this piece on how to choose reading material for Lent is a prime example of why.
It’s not wrong to take practices upon ourselves (prayers, readings, penitential acts), but we have to have an awareness that they are chosen by ourselves, and for our own sake, we need to have a healthy suspicion precisely of ourselves, because the self is not God. As important as it is to be careful of what we eat, it is immensely more important to be careful of spiritual food, which can be for our health or can lead to spiritual sickness.
Of course, she won me over by referencing Blessed Columba Marmion (you can never go wrong with him!) but her advice is geared to the busy married woman with many earthly concerns. “Priorities” is her watchword:
The “state” of a woman with a husband and a family is the state of marriage. Do we think of that state as involving duties which it is in our spiritual interest to fulfill, or do we see it as either a sort of self-fulfillment exercise or even a burden — something we have to be talked into all the time, something we can’t confront or fulfill without constant pep talks and assurances that we will be left with a reasonable amount of freedom — that some part of our inner self will remain untouched?
Sometimes I think that women enter into this state freely and then spend the rest of their lives trying to escape!
How honest is that! I remember a book written anonymously by a young mother who was receiving messages from Our Lord (“Mariamonte” I think was her nom-de-plume? I have no reason to believe that she wasn’t authentic.) One particularly enlightening passage (which shouted “real!” to me) was a conversation she was having with God about something, and she was swept up, and engaged, and invested entirely in the encounter when He said, “Your baby is crying.” She was startled to realise He was not only right, but correct in sending her off to tend to her primary obligation, the child.
May this be a fruitful Lent for all — so that we not only find God, but find him in our ordinary paths where He lingers throughout our days. Be careful with what you propose to do over the next six weeks, for in searching for God in unrealistic ways we don’t want to provide a penance for others, who should see Him through our own love for them. Tricky balance, as ever!
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