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Contents © 1999
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

If Christ Has Done All, What Could I Do?

by Broderick Barker

In later years, I gave up drink, except, of course, on Sundays (little Easters), St. Patrick's day, the Solemnity of St. Joseph, and the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I also tried an early morning regimen of pushups, situps, and running alongside the highway that led to campus, a hilly, windy, mile-long circuit. This was splendid penance -- I detested exercise outside of athletics, the sulphuric smell from a nearby mountain mixing with the hot exhaust of passing cars, the uphill return to campus.

I had always taken Lent seriously, enough to be frustrated with those of my public school classmates who left school to get their ashes merely for the sake of leaving school. College, however, was where I first experimented with self-denial. After years of pussyfooting around with things like giving up candy -- who eats candy often enough to really miss it?--I was excited to attempt real mortification. Those attempts were not useless; they were honest efforts toward letting my faith have an impact on the rest of my life. But while the flesh was willing, the spirit was weak. Mine were feats of endurance, not charity. It showed in the way I discussed my penances with my friends, not flaunting them in public to show my holiness, but eager for my intimates to know my struggles. "Gosh, this Lent thing is tough, no?" I was gutting it out, sucking it up, struggling toward the relief of Easter, when I would offer Christ my sacrifice-scrubbed soul. My spirit was (is) Pelagian. As I jogged along, gasping for wind, I repeated to myself, "What will you do for Christ, who has done all things for you?" But if Christ has done all, what could I do? The question of grace and free will is a thorny one, but I know my own case. I know that in times of suffering, self-imposed or otherwise, I look first to myself, and then call on God when I find myself insufficient.

This Lent has been rocky. Ash Wednesday came and went amid a morass of work-related troubles, and I told myself I would get to Lent when I got out of the swamp. I had intended to take up daily readings from a Breviary; I gave up TV as a sort of stopgap measure. But the swamp thickened, and during the week of my parents' visit, a black mood settled over me. I was touchy, frustrated, and sulky -- thoroughly unpleasant company. My mom, with alternating gentleness and humor, reminded me that "one prayer of thanksgiving when things go poorly is worth a thousand when things go well." She reminded me to praise the Lord at all times. I responded with impatience, even anger. Why should that be? Why was it hard to hear a suggestion, from a parent whose love is unquestioned, that I seek help from the surest source? Why did I hold on to my suffering, trying to grit my teeth and pull myself out?

Pride, pride of a masculine sort. Before daily prayer was a true habit for my dad, Mom could always tell when he hadn't prayed. He didn't handle the frequently intense stress of his work as well. The same was true for my brother and his wife. Now it's my turn. "It's important for men to pray," says Mom. "To submit themselves to Christ." Everyone must bend his will, but this desire to take care of problems without help seems a more masculine failing. From a distance, the danger is easy to see: "It's my problem, I'll deal with it," leading to, "It's my soul, I'll sanctify it." No, you won't. The problem is maintaining that distance. While in college, I read about a vision St. Jerome had of the Child Jesus. Memory fails, I must paraphrase: Jesus asked Jerome why he hadn't given Him everything. Jerome was mystified. "Lord," he protested, "I have devoted my life to your service. I have given you all my works, all my love, all my praise, everything." "No," Jesus replied, "You haven't given me your sins." Give it over, offer it up. Be clay in the potter's hands. I have assented to this thought for some time without achieving it. A few days ago, my brother sent me the St. Joseph Guide for Christian Prayer (The Liturgy of the Hours), to help me use the Breviary he gave me for Christmas. Lent is not over yet.

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