During Lent, the devil is in the discouragement

As we approach the halfway point of the Lenten season, many of us are experiencing a sort of “mid-Lent crisis.” So many things we had hoped to accomplish remain undone, half-done, or not really done—checked off, in a way, but without the irreproachable purity we imagined for ourselves at the outset.

But while faithful Christians are aware of the grave temptation of doing little to nothing in this holy season, I wonder if we’re always sufficiently attuned to that other great temptation, which the devil is only too happy to exploit for his purposes.

I am talking, of course, of discouragement.

Recently, I experienced a kind of spiritual jolt over the dwindling days of Lent. As a father of four approaching my fortieth birthday, I’ve become painfully aware of how quickly time goes, and the forty days of Lent are no exception. I resolved to reclaim the season, breaking out into a kind of spiritual sprint.

That Friday, I was—I think I can say without pride—living in a way that looked a lot less like the rest of the year and a lot more like Lent. It was a day of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, one in which I intentionally drove myself toward an increase in faith, hope, and love. All was well.

Until it wasn’t.

Toward the end of the day, the accumulation of foreground to-dos and background stressors got the better of me, and in a flash, I lost my temper over a trifling matter. A winning streak ruined, a spiritual sprint tripped up—a solid Lenten day spoiled!

In a familiar spiral, I found myself ruminating about what had happened: why I tripped up, the nature of the fall, and above all, how frustrating and disappointing it was that I had failed to meet such a small moment after such a spiritually enriching day. I ate dinner in a sulk, and for the rest of evening, with my family still buzzing about, remained withdrawn, unenergetic, and unfocused.

What’s more offensive to God: when in our frailty we stumble and fall, or when we refuse to be picked up and dusted off? C.S. Lewis wrote that the devil “always sends errors into the world in pairs—pairs of opposites,” and “relies on your extra dislike of one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.”

And the opposite danger of moral and spiritual indifference is moral and spiritual discouragement.

Why does the devil get such a kick out of us feeding indiscriminately and self-absorbedly on the goods of this world? Because it inhibits the work of love for God and neighbor. Yet discouragement sinks us into precisely the same space: instead of accepting our own frailty and continuing on the path of love, we turn inward and become paralyzed by our own inadequacy. Our discouragement keeps us from the praise we could be offering to God and the concrete good we could be doing for others.

If the devil can’t ensnare us in an unscrupulous shrug, he will happily use a scrupulous huff.

Of course, repentance—sorrow over our own sin, confession, acts of contrition, examinations of conscience—is necessary to the Christian life. But discouragement isn’t repentance; it’s the devilish parody of repentance. On the surface, it appears to have the same focus: God commanding us to be holy, and our failure to obey that command. But repentance is a sorrow over sin that looks up to God in tears; discouragement is a sorrow over peccadillos that looks inward at the self in frustration. It’s not the breast-beating lament of the tax collector, but the head-spinning snit of the Pharisee.

The following day, at Mass, I heard the familiar summons of Christ: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

In his homily, the priest reflected, “We will never be like God in our whole lives; but it’s worth the try.” This is the tensive space of the Christian: a spiritual rigor that surpasses that of the rigorist but a practical relaxation that surpasses that of the laxist—relying entirely on God and his mercy like the tax collector, but harnessing our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength like the Pharisee. We strive to be perfect—but also recognizing the fact that, this side of eternity, we never will be.