THE SEASON OF LENT will soon be upon us. Our Lenten experience is personally lived out in prayer and acts of penance as we seek to develop our relationship with God and eradicate vices that have become fond habits in our lives. We seek to live the Lenten season communally and could attend a parish mission, retreat, or Bible study, where we encourage each other to pick up our cross and follow Jesus.
Reviewing how our Lenten practices went last year is a good place to start as we discern how the Lord is inviting us to enter the Lenten season more fully this year. Did we stay with Jesus for 40 days or give up our resolutions halfway through Lent? Did we remain with Him during Holy Week as He entered into His passion by taking more time for silence, liturgical services and fasting? Did we find ourselves more free from the influences and temptations of the world? Were we able to rejoice in the Resurrection of Jesus on Easter and claim the power of His Resurrection in all the circumstances of our life?
Whether last year’s Lenten experience was fruitful or a failure, Jesus always offers us more to receive as we hope to grow in holiness and love as His disciples. Our faithfulness to our Lenten resolutions depends on how we stay with Jesus and trust in His strength, not our own.
We need a model of trust and a mother to teach us the way of trust. Our Lady is the perfect person for this role. Although she was immaculately conceived and committed no sin, she was fully human and still had to choose to trust God each day as she faithfully responded to what was asked of her.
The Pro Sanctity Movement is uniquely devoted to Mary under the title of Our Lady of Trust. The Pro Sanctity Movement is a lay movement in the Catholic Church that promotes the Universal Call to Holiness in daily life by cultivating the interior life through spiritual programs led by its consecrated and lay members. Devotion to Our Lady of Trust began with its founder, Servant of God, Guglielmo Giaquinta. He encountered a similar devotion to Our Lady of Confidence while a seminarian in Rome.
The feast day for Our Lady of Trust is celebrated on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday each year. It’s a most fitting way to enter into the Lenten season with a renewed attitude of hope and trust as we seek to remain with Jesus as He invites us to follow Him.
When we experience discouragement with our weak humanity, sadness about circumstances, dryness in prayer or temptation to be lazy, we need to seek the intercession of Our Lady and ask her to help us to trust that we are always under the loving gaze of God. We are called to trust that God is actively laboring to love us, His grace is always available and that we are never alone. The love of a mother gives us, her children, the courage to continue the journey of Lent, regardless of how we feel or if the way becomes difficult.
Mary is the model of trust because she trusts God, but her life also shows us that God can trust her. She lived her life in a way that was open to God’s work. God’s will was her way of life. The Father was able to entrust Our Lady with His plan for salvation. Jesus could trust Mary with His very life as she cared for Him until He left their home. He could also trust her surrender to the Holy Spirit, who prompted her to pray and discern when the time was right for Him to begin His public ministry. Finally, Jesus could trust that Mary will not leave Him even in the midst of great suffering at the foot of the cross and during the darkness as she awaited His Resurrection.
Let us ask for a trustful heart this Lent as ask Our Lady of Trust for the help we need to follow her Son during this Lenten season.