For some of us a Lenten discipline is as automatic and essential as presents are at Christmas—with perhaps some of the same pitfalls of familiarity as well. Done rightly, it is a good and honorable practice. Commending it to the folks in the parish, though, is a little trickier, especially when it is new and unfamiliar. This is the letter I hand out to my parishioners the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday to encourage them to give it a try. Feel free to use and adapt it to your own setting. I realize there is some dispute about the counting of the days of Lent, but as that is hardly the material point, go ahead and change it if you subscribe to the other method.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Lent is the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter (not counting Sundays—every Sunday is a “little Easter”). Traditionally Christians have used Lent to focus on God, or better yet to re-focus on God. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life it’s easy to lose focus. Lent is a chance to get the focus back again.

One of the ways to do that is to adopt a Lenten discipline. This discipline is not supposed to be some kind of punishment. The point of it is to do something that will catch your attention every day, and every time your attention is caught, you focus your mind on God, remembering what He has done for you.

There are two basic kinds of disciplines. One is adding something to your life, and the other is giving something up.

Adding something. Your life is already busy and full, so adding one more thing might seem impossible. But you should choose something that you need in your life—something that the other things in your life need to make room for. For example, you might be unhappy with your prayer life. Perhaps you pray irregularly, or not all. A good Lenten discipline might be to say the Lord’s Prayer every morning when you get up and every night before you go to bed. It is a small thing, but it catches your attention—you’ll start noticing that every day before you belongs to God, and every day behind you was guided by God. Or, maybe you could give some of your time to the community. You could add an hour a week voluteering in a shelter, soup kitchen, senior center, or elementary school—wherever your gifts could be used best.

Giving something up. When you take something out of your life, it’s to remind you that you depend on God and nothing else. You can survive without all kinds of things you’re used to having—but you can’t survive without God. Some kind of food is a common thing to give up. You could stop eating meat, or dairy, or bread (“man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”). However—this is very important!!—you should not give up a food if your motivation is to lose weight or improve your health. Then it’s about yourself and not about God. If you give up a food, it’s so that every time you crave it, and then decide not to have it, your attention is caught and directed back to God. You could also give up a bad habit, something that is interfering with your Christian life—excessive swearing, or reading a horoscope as if it really told your future, are examples of this. This kind of thing is really up to you to decide for yourself—what’s getting between you and God.

What if you mess up? It’s not the end of the world. A Lenten discipline isn’t a pact between you and God so that you’re in big trouble if you make a mistake. It should be entered into freely and lovingly, with the intention of honoring God. Every day is a fresh start. It will also make a witness to your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I encourage you to look into your heart in the following days before Lent begins and see if this is a good way for you to serve your Lord.

P.S. Don’t be afraid to start even after Ash Wednesday! Sometimes it takes a little while to build up the gumption to try something new. God will accept your discipline no matter when you do it.