The prophets of Israel repeatedly cried, Return. Joel called the people to return to God with their whole hearts—not merely by changing their outward appearance, but by allowing their hearts themselves to be broken open. The psalmist prayed, in effect: Search me, know me, reveal what is false within me, and lead me once again along the ancient path. Lent begins here—not with punishment, but with truthfulness before God.
Jesus deepened that ancient call when he said that anyone who wished to follow him must deny himself, take up His cross, and follow. To deny the self does not mean despising the person God created. It means refusing to allow the frightened, possessive, self-protecting ego to remain upon the throne. It is the denial of that false self which insists that life must conform to our desires, that our comfort must be protected, and that circumstances and people must remain under our control.
This is what we are attempting to accomplish!
We are seeking to relinquish the rule of the self so that Christ may increasingly become the governing presence within us. We are seeking to become inwardly free—free enough to hear, free enough to obey, free enough to love without continually asking what love will cost us.
The desert fathers understood that this struggle takes place primarily within the heart. They withdrew from the noise of society only to discover they had carried the noise with them. Memories, resentments, desires, fears, fantasies, pride, and the need for recognition followed them into their cells.
Evagrius therefore taught the monk to observe his thoughts carefully: to notice their arrival, their patterns, their intensification, and the direction in which they attempted to carry the soul.
The great battle was not simply against outward misconduct; it was against the thoughts to which we quietly surrender before the outward act ever occurs.
John Cassian gave this work its enduring objective: purity of heart. He compared it to an archer fixing his attention upon a mark. Whenever the mind wandered, it was to be gently but firmly recalled to its true direction. Cassian did not imagine that we could remain perfectly attentive to God at every moment.
He taught instead that we must know where to return whenever we discover that we have wandered.
That may be one of the most important truths in the spiritual life: holiness does not mean never wandering. It means learning to return.
Augustine knew why this returning was necessary. The human heart, he wrote, remains restless until it rests in God. We attempt to quiet that restlessness with possessions, accomplishments, approval, amusements, control, and comfort. Yet none can carry the weight of our deepest longing. Lent exposes these substitutes—not to leave us empty and desolate, but to prepare within us a space that only God can fill.
Benedict inherited this long tradition and gave it a disciplined, humane form. A monastic life, he wrote, ought always to bear the character of Lent. Yet Benedict’s continuous Lent is not a life of continuous misery.
It is a life of continuous attentiveness—a willingness to examine where negligence has entered, where desire has become disordered, and where our actions no longer agree with our profession.
His remedies are prayer, lectio, compunction of heart, restraint, and self-denial. But Benedict adds something essential: these offerings are to be made with the joy of the Holy Spirit and with spiritual longing for Easter. The purpose of restraint is not deprivation for its own sake. We surrender lesser things so that our desire for the greater thing may be restored. We empty the cup so that it may receive living water.
Sister Joan’s image of “emptying our own cups” reaches back through Benedict,
Cassian, the desert, the Gospel, and the prophets.
The cup is filled with our explanations, opinions,
rehearsed grievances, anxieties, judgments, plans, and demands.
We are so filled with what we think, want, fear,
and expect that there is little room left
to receive anything we have not already decided.
Listening is the beginning of the emptying.
But listening is not merely being quiet. It is making ourselves available to be changed by what we hear. True listening may reveal that the path we are defending is not the path of Christ. It may require an apology, a relinquishment, a courageous word, an act of mercy, or the surrender of some comfort we have mistaken for necessity. Listening becomes obedience when we act upon what has been revealed.
And so the continuous Lent asks us daily:
Where has my heart wandered?
What am I protecting?
What voice am I refusing to hear?
What must I relinquish so that love may act through me?
Where is Christ asking me to follow—now, without delay?
We cannot accomplish this by determination alone. The false self cannot dismantle the false self.
We require grace: grace to recognize our evasions,
grace to confess them, grace to begin again,
and grace to take the next faithful step.
The continuous Lent is therefore not endless self-condemnation. It is an unending return—an honest, hopeful, daily turning toward the One who is already calling us home.
We examine our lives not because God is eager to find us guilty, but because God desires to make us free. We restrain ourselves not because creation is evil, but because our appetites so easily become masters. We enter silence not to escape the world, but to hear how God would have us serve it.
We empty our cups not so that
they may remain empty, but so that, by his grace,
they may be filled with Christ.
Listen! He's talking to you!
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