These first days of the season, the days from Ash Wednesday to the First Sunday of Lent, are the training wheels of Lent. They help us work our way into the more serious stuff, for example: beginning to name and address a growing problem area in our lives (porn use, for example, even if it hasn't reached the point of addiction); looking at harmful relationships (whether we are the ones treating others in self-centered, manipulative ways, or are tolerating and "forgiving" abuse repeatedly); letting the Lord redirect our priorities back to where they should be, rather than where we may have set them.
That smudged cross on our forehead announces to us and to the world that we are not as we should be; that our lives, including our thoughts and values, are not 100% "conformed to the image of the Son." And because of this, we accept the invitation to pray, give alms, and do penance. This last can be a real head-scratcher in our day. Deliberately taking on some personal, even bodily limitation or displeasure in the expectation that has any correlation with whatever is spiritually out of kilter with us? An ideal penance will have some specific correlation with the sin or offense it seeks to repair or correct, but even more than that, we unite our puny efforts to the suffering of Jesus if they are to have any value at all, and trust that, as we ourselves have become "members of his body," God sees our penances as "the sufferings of Christ" himself in us, so that they bear the fruits of the Risen Christ in us: charity, joy, peace, patience, mildness, purity...
In today's second reading, Paul exhorted us, "Now is the acceptable time!" We might translate that, "There's no time like the present!"
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