Lent 2026 #1: How Does God Love?

 It was not immediately obvious what to do for Lent this year. It took some time to discern the particular direction God desires for me to go. For my prayer commitment, I decided to return to a particular practice of meditating on the daily readings for 10 minutes a day. This time, I am focused specifically on discerning how God loves, within the context of each reading, as I continue my journey to learn to love as He does. If you'd like to learn more about the readings that I am following, please see the footnote at the end of this post. 

Wednesday's gospel reading, Ash Wednesday, was from Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18. For now, I will focus only on verses 1-4, from the NRSVCE version:

"Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." 

There is something really beautiful buried in these verses. In our broken human condition, we can be prone to wanting to receive acknowledgment for our good deeds and accomplishments. Yet, God calls us to not seek that fanfare, but to do our deeds in secret, that He alone may reward us. As the verses go on, it is explained that if we do our deeds in order to be seen, we have already received our reward. 

It can be hard to wait for anything in our culture. We are conditioned to want and to receive everything now, immediately. Yet, that "now" often falls short. It may give a momentary surge of dopamine, but then we are left wanting more. More food, more likes, more money, more everything. Often, even the temporary greatness of receiving just doesn't feel like quite enough, like it's not exactly fit to the desire. 

The God of the universe comes to us in the simplicity of bread, in a quiet whisper within, in a simple inspiration to turn to the right or to the left. He wants us to love Him simply for Himself, not all the gifts He gives or the fancy fanfare. He is infinitely generous and may pour out great things upon us, but we can too easily become distracted by shiny things and forget Him. 

But there is a flip side to this desire of God that we love Him just for Himself - He loved us that way first. He doesn't love us for the fancy things we may try to do for Him or for the things we may accomplish or have, whether spiritual or material. He just loves us. Period.

Peace be with you.

For those of you who are not Catholic, we do not have church only on Sundays, but on all the days of the week, if we desire to go more often. We call it daily mass on the other days of the week. It is usually a simplified version of the Sunday mass, but each day of the week has its own Scripture readings. These readings, and the mass itself, are the same throughout the whole world, so we can visit anywhere and literally be on the same page. There can be optional readings that can be substituted and there may be small local variances, but the overall liturgical form is the same, the same words of consecration, the same structure to the mass, as we are all one family, coming before our one God. It is a form that has been around since the beginning of Christianity, though it has become more specific with time. If you'd like to follow along with us each day, you can find the readings here.

Photo Credit: Roland Larsson, Stocksnap.io

Scripture Credit:

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition. Bible Gateway, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206%3A1-4&version=NRSVCE. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.