Lent: Intention makes the sacrifice

What is the difference between thinking and praying? Between dieting and fasting? Between spending and almsgiving?

Each pair consists of an identical action: forming sentences, abstaining from food, or relinquishing money. The difference comes not from the action, but from the intention of the actor. Dieting, thinking, and spending money are actions done for and directed to the individual self. Praying, fasting, and almsgiving are done for and directed to God.

It’s not an exaggeration, then, to say that intentions can make—or break—our Lent. This fact, of course, presumes we are indeed performing Lenten disciplines, both those prescribed by the Church and those chosen for ourselves. The famous phrase, “The road to Hell was paved with good intentions,” applies not to actors but to those who intended to act but failed to do so.

In Catholic theology, the action itself is always primary and determines whether the actor does good or evil. Intentions and circumstances additionally surround every action and influence its probity. The two, if good, can never transform an intrinsically evil action into a good one, but, if evil, they can neutralize the goodness of an act or even make it evil. An example of the former case is giving alms to receive approval from others; giving a colleague a gift in order to humiliate him exemplifies the latter.

Lenten disciplines intersect with intentions on two levels. First, whether we carry out the Church’s fasting and abstinence practices with joy or chagrin, with facility or difficulty, we perform a good deed for God. But we offer more honor for God, and do more for ourselves, if we consciously offer these practices to Him in prayer rather than perform them without thought or resentfully. Just as the grace generated by a sacrament (in theological language, ex opere operato) has differing effects on individual believers depending on their disposition toward God, so too do the merits gained from fasting depend on individuals’ dispositions. The more we desire to please God, and the more we can fight off temptations to self-pity, the greater are the spiritual benefits of fasting.

Second, by our intentions, we can transform ordinary actions into gifts for God. As St. Augustine wrote in The City of God, “The true sacrifice is offered in every act which is designated to unite us to God in holy fellowship, every act, that is, which is directed to that final Good which makes possible our true felicity” (X.6). A cold shower, for example, can be an attempt at waking up or training the body. But with the intention of honoring God, which we do through silent prayer, that cold shower becomes a sacrifice offered to Him as meaningful as any other.

Likewise, we can abstain from coffee for the sake of our health. But if we abstain from it as a sacrifice to God, we offer a gift for His glory and for the sake of our salvation. When it comes to such actions, which the Church calls corporal mortification (literally, “making the body dead” in regards to its worldly and sinful desires), there is no end of opportunities with the right intention, as Augustine summarizes: “Our body also is a sacrifice when we discipline it by temperance, provided that we do this as we ought for the sake of God.”

Jesus endorses this practice of hidden intention in the Sermon on the Mount, and the Church wisely reminds us of this fact in the Gospel of Ash Wednesday: “But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. … But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matt 6:3-4, 6)

When we sacrifice something, we willingly remove it from our use and leave it for God, even if that practically means that the thing we offer up does not move from the shelf. That we intend to pass on these items, rather than pass over them unwittingly or for some other purpose, makes the sacrifice.

In our age of radical individualism and self-indulgence, sacrifice is outrageously counter-cultural: “Why not have the cookies, the meat, the snacks? What does God care if we eat or not? Shouldn’t we just focus on loving others? Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and God says He desires mercy rather than sacrifice.”

“The meaning of the text, ‘I desire mercy rather than sacrifice,’” St. Augustine continued, “is simply that one sacrifice is preferred to another; for what is generally called sacrifice is really a sign of the true sacrifice,” and “true sacrifices are acts of compassion, whether towards ourselves or towards our neighbors, when they are directed toward God.”

How can a sacrifice be an act of compassion towards oneself? Because, as St. Augustine said, “it is man, not God, who is benefited by all the worship which is rightly offered to God.” Sacrifice transcends the self-indulgence of the age by setting us in right relationship with God, pulling us out of our egos and into communion with Him. As we hear in Preface II of Lent, fasting changes us so that “freed from disordered affections, [we] may so deal with the things of this passing world as to hold rather to the things that eternally endure.”

With the best of intentions, our Lenten disciplines can pave a path to Heaven. May God purify our intentions so we can tread the path of our Lord alongside Him.

Read original article