February 18, 2024
I loved Fridays in Lent as a kid: the peanut butter sandwiches at lunch and fish sticks and mac-and-cheese for dinner; Stations of the Cross in the afternoon at school; the Rice Bowl collection box we were given to save-up our quarters for the foreign Catholic missions.
I even liked the “Pretzel-Sacrifice Challenge” offered to the entire student body by our school principal, Sister Mary Austin, IHM. Sister “strongly suggested” that sacrificing our soft pretzel snack during Friday morning recess would, in a very small but concrete way, put us in solidarity with those experiencing hunger and poverty in our world, and would also teach us what it really means to offer something up for the good of others who are suffering. It was an optional penance, of course, but many of us in the middle school grades accepted Sister’s challenge.
Was it an easy sacrifice for a 12-year-old who was always ravenous by 10 a.m.? No.
And that was exactly the point Sister Austin was trying to teach us. Lenten sacrifices are meant to move us to focus on God and others rather than to live in a world where our needs and wants always take center stage. As Sister explained to us, these moments of “offering-up” unite us with Jesus Christ who suffers even now in our less-fortunate brothers and sisters in need of both food and compassion. Perhaps implementing these “Sacrifice Fridays” in some way in our own homes will remind us of the importance of uniting our offerings to the Cross of Christ, who sacrificed everything out of love for us.
Find whatever your “pretzel” may be this Lenten season and offer it up. God will use it in ways beyond our understanding … and Sister Mary Austin would be pleased to know her lesson is still resonating in the world all these years later.