Lent's Sacrament of the Moment

Picture by Shawn Bailey and used with permission. Thank you.

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NOTE: about every 5 weeks, I show up on Salt and Light Radio’s Blessed and Beautiful Segment for 15 minutes to share thoughts and experiences on an assigned topic. While the interview plays out spontaneously, this is a more comprehensive reflection of what aired on Friday, April 4, 2025. 

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​This Lent, our Blessed and Beautiful theme was “sacraments and sacramentals.” What came to me, though, was not one of the seven sacraments or even a popular sacramental, but living a different sacrament, that of the present moment. The best way to go after this topic might be to break it down into a theology of sacraments versus a theology of the present moment and then an application to Lent.
 
Theology of the seven sacraments. The Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church #224 offers great definition of sacrament, but what sticks in my head from childhood is the old Baltimore Catechism definition of a sacrament as “an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace.” In the Eucharist, for example, the signs of bread and wine are changed into spiritual food and drink. A few Latin phrases help unpack this. Ex opere operato means that the sacraments objectively dispense grace to us, whereas, ex opere operatis means that the sacramental grace is received subjectively. In other words, we can go to Mass and Jesus gives himself to us, but we can block the fruitfulness of this through poor disposition of heart. Unfortunately, this is why so many Catholics can attend Mass but are not transformed in heart and life.
 
Theology of the present moment. Each moment of life is an avenue of grace, but the gift of that moment must be unwrapped. “All that happens to me will be food for my nourishment, water for my cleansing, fire for my purification, and a channel of grace for all my needs,” writes J.P. de Caussade, S.J., in Abandonment to Divine Providence.  Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D., puts it this way, “there is not a single moment when God is not communicating himself…God speaks through events” (Into Your Hands, Father). The present moment is the here and now of God’s presence and will. We are called to surrender the past, entrust the future, and live fully in the present moment, for only in the present is grace available to us. St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta talked about the people she served as, “Jesus in disguise.” Each moment offers the same, Jesus in disguise.  
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Lent presents a unique opportunity to learn about and live into the sacrament of the present moment. If we recall Jesus’ visit with Peter on the shore after the resurrection, he asked him three times if he loved him and then asked him to feed his sheep. Right after that, Jesus said to Peter: “‘when you were young, you dressed yourself and walked where you wanted; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. And after He had said this, He told him, ‘Follow Me’” (Jn. 21: 18-19). Here, we notice two primary phases of growth in discipleship, important humanly and spiritually.  
 
When young, Peter would do things himself and on his own terms. Likewise, the tasks of the first half of human life and the first half of the spiritual life are more active and even proactive. It’s critical to set and meet goals. We ought to prayerfully identify how we are uniquely called to implement the three practices of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. This builds a life of virtue through generosity and discipline. If we divide the spiritual life into halves, the first half is called ascetical, from the word “ascesis” or austere discipline. We notice, that even when prayerfully discerned, these goals are still, in a sense, on our terms.
 
When older, Peter stretches out his arms to embrace life and is led where he doesn’t want to go. This second half of human life and the second half of spiritual life is more passive and surrendered, very appropriate for this time. Dreams have shifted, some goals have been reached and others not, but overall there is a call to increased faith, peace, and love with focus on the essential. Here is where the sacrament of the present moment fits best, with the caveat that it applies always. In this stage of life or those situations that we all encounter from time to time, the call is to, “find God in all things” (St. Ignatius of Loyola). This second half of the spiritual life is called mystical because one lives more in and by the mystery of supernatural grace.
 
Lent’s invitation to the sacrament of the present moment might be expressed best with this reflection question. How did I live lent, or how did lent live me? I remember one lent when I had my resolutions of prayer, fasting, and giving all lined out and was doing my best to follow through. Then, a major crisis happened that spring, and I realized that I had one lent planned out and the Lord had another. The planned and the unexpected of each moment allow us to tap into His loving presence and will.  

When retreatants pray through the nineteenth annotation, also called spiritual exercises in everyday life, they often connect the spiritual dots for the first time. As they pray and live the entire life of Jesus Christ in their own lives, the sacrament of the present moment becomes more noticeable and fruitful. Because it’s Lent, we will focus on some typical graces of praying with and living through the sorrowful mysteries of the passion and death of Jesus Christ. In the spiritual exercises, the sorrowful mysteries are an invitation to faithfulness to Christ when His divinity seems absent, his human sufferings obvious, and victory out of reach.  

Suffering is alien to each of us and watching a loved one suffer even more so. Here, we are invited to confront unknown fears of suffering and death. This suffering can be physical, professional, spiritual, psychological, financial, or relational. In one way or another, we all encounter a part of ourselves that the Lord, in His great love, wants to set free. In the passage above about St. Peter, it speaks of the death that would glorify God, those little dyings that are so necessary to enter into the resurrection. “I will break down the gates of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by name” (Is. 45: 2).

When what is hidden is revealed, it is only to be healed. Isaiah prophesied, “by His stripes we are healed” (Is. 53: 5). Healing indicates wounds in need of tender loving care, and it is often the deeper realities that bring us face-to-face with God, ourselves, and others. We find that we can run but we can’t hide, maybe from ourselves and others, but not from Him. How tight is our friendship with Jesus, anyway? He is there with us, in our most difficult, ugly, and unwanted places as well as the easiest, beautiful, and sweetest. He's not afraid to be there with us, because He’s already been there. He’s already redeemed that, if we but receive the grace poured out from His side, moment by moment.

The purpose of Lent is not punitive but unitive. It's meant to “thicken” our relationship with God (Alicia Britt Chole, 40 Days of Decrease). The hope is that, in every moment, especially during lent, we would respond like Jacob in the Old Testament, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it…How awesome is this place!” (Gen. 28: 16-17).