February 18, 2025 // Perspective

The Acceptable Time

Ken Hallenius

Not to lay a guilt trip on you, but those good intentions with which you began 2025, how are you doing with them? Are you continuing to work out at the gym every other day and getting full value from your membership fees? Have you called your mother every week like you planned? Are you still spending a few minutes in prayer at the end of every day?

If you’re anything like me, it may be only the end of February, but New Year’s Day 2025 and its attendant resolutions already seem like they happened more than a year ago. But I have good news for you. The Church, like Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, knows the human heart and offers us an invitation to reset our lives and refocus our attention on what is important for our spirit and soul.

Next week, we will celebrate Ash Wednesday and embark on the season of Lent, a privileged season of repentance and renewal. The readings for Ash Wednesday are some of my favorites on the liturgical calendar. The prophet Joel will encourage us to “rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord, your God” (2:13). St. Paul will remind us that “now is a very acceptable time” to be reconciled to God (2 Cor 6:2). And we will listen to Jesus as He explains that when we fast, we should look – and actually be – joyful, rather than to appear gloomy as the hypocrites do (cf. Mt 6:16).

My own observance of Ash Wednesday this year is going to be a little different than ever before. My wife and I won an ocean cruise that takes place during the first week in March, and Ash Wednesday will fall right in the middle of the trip. We’ve never been on a cruise before, so every experience will be new to us, but I have been thinking a lot about how I will spend this day of fasting and prayer at sea. I know that I won’t be loading up plates all day at the buffet or gulping down tiki drinks in a poolside deck chair, and that might seem like a wasted day while on a cruise. I anticipate that practicing Jesus’ admonition not to look gloomy while fasting, but to do so with joy, will be my particular challenge. And it doesn’t really help that Ash Wednesday this year will also be my birthday!

But the small sacrifices we are called to follow on Ash Wednesday and throughout the Lenten season are invitations to turn our minds beyond what is in front of us in the moment and to recall what hope lies in our hearts as sons and daughters of God. The time-honored spiritual practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are concrete ways that we grow closer to God, and they are strengthened through regular practice. In our habitual prayer, we join in conversation with the One who first loved us. By fasting from the ship’s buffet, or our favorite TV series, or some other good thing, we learn to trust that God will provide for all our needs. And through our charitable almsgiving, we recognize and uphold the dignity of the person standing in front of us, who is also created in the image and likeness of God.

In this Jubilee Year of Hope, we have a special opportunity to share the fruits of our prayer, fasting, and almsgiving with those who need them the most. One of the marks of the Jubilee is the offer of an indulgence that can be applied to our beloved dead, which remits the temporal punishment that they must endure as an effect of sin. This Jubilee indulgence, which can be obtained once per day, is gained through various means, including making a pilgrimage to a designated church or chapel, spending dedicated time in prayer, or visiting a sick person to accompany them in their suffering. Our concrete acts of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, are expressions of our Christian hope – a hope that does not disappoint.

As we enter into this Lenten season, it’s never too early nor too late to make a new resolution, to turn to the Lord, and to be filled with hope. Now is a very acceptable time. Now is the day of our salvation!

Ken Hallenius is a syndicated radio host and podcaster living in South Bend.