The Disciplines That Leave Us Unchanged

There is a version of Lent that looks exactly right. Mass on Ash Wednesday, fish on Fridays, a noble sacrifice announced with appropriate humility. The rosary gets picked up again. The chocolate stays in the cupboard. From the outside, everything is in order. And yet, by Holy Week, something feels hollow — not because we failed to keep our commitments, but because we kept them and still feel no different. The practices were observed. The person was not converted.

This is the quiet problem at the heart of Lenten discipline. Jesus, in Matthew 6, assumes his followers will pray, fast, and give — but his concern is never merely whether they do these things. It is why, and from where. The Pharisees fasted rigorously and prayed at length. Their discipline was real. What was missing was the interiority behind it, the turning of the heart that the practices were meant to produce, not substitute for. When we fast from food but feed every other appetite without question, we have managed our hunger rather than examined it. When we add a daily prayer but treat it as a box to tick before the day begins, we have scheduled God rather than sought him. When we give to those in need but feel quietly satisfied with ourselves for doing so, the gift has curved back toward us. None of this is hypocrisy in the dramatic sense. It is something more ordinary and more common: going through the motions with genuine effort, but without the surrender that makes them mean anything.

The invitation this Lent is not to observe the disciplines better, but to let them do something to us. Fasting is not primarily about the absence of food; it is about noticing what we reach for when uncomfortable, and sitting with that honestly before God. Prayer is not about finding the right words or the right mood; it is about showing up honestly, distracted, dry, or uncertain, and trusting that God meets us there rather than waiting for a tidier version of ourselves. Almsgiving is not a transaction that discharges our social conscience, but a loosening of the grip we keep on what we have earned. Each practice, entered into with openness rather than obligation, becomes less about achievement and more about exposure, a gradual revealing of where we are still holding back. The goal is not a Lent we can look back on with satisfaction. It is a self we can barely recognise by Easter.