Cardinal John Henry Newman while at St. Chad’s Cathedral in 1848 described a succinct warning for you and me. ... "the present war wit evil spirits would seem to be very different from what it was in former ages. They attack a civilized age in a more subtle way than they attack a rude age. We read in lies of saints and others of the evil spirit showing himself and fighting with them face to face, but now those subtle and experienced spirits find it is more to their purpose not to show themselves, or at least not so much. They find it in their interest to let the idea of them die away from the minds of men that, being unrecognized they may to the more mischief.....In subtle ways they address themselves to our pride or self-importance, or love of money, or love of ease, or love of show, or our depraved reason, and thus have dominion over the persons who seem at first sight to be quite superior to temptation."

As Cardinal Newman suggests we are in an age that is more fertile in excuses and evasions. It can defend error, and hence can blind the eyes of those who have not very careful consciences. It can defend error and thus blind the eyes of those whose consciences wander. It can make error plausible; it can make vice look like virtue. It dignifies sin by sophisticated names and ideas; it calls avarice proper care of one’s family; it calls pride independence; it calls ambition greatness of mind; resentment it calls proper spirit and sense of honor; perjury of powerful elected officials it calls a private, unimportant matter, and so on.

1 Peter 5:8 is clear on this matter..."Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

Origen, surnamed Adamantinus, an Alexandrian of the third century warns, if the mind be "negligent and slothful, it makes room through insufficient caution for these spirits, lying in wait secretly like robbers contrive to rush in to the minds of men."

Thascius Cyprian, a member of the episcopate of the third century, in his treatise X on jealousy and envy, makes a similar statement... "we must be on our guard, and strive with all our powers to repel, with solicitous and full watchfulness, the enemy, raging and aiming his darts against every part of our body in which we can be stricken and wounded."

There are many ways for us to mark the journey of Lent but instead of abstaining from something, it is also possible to do something special. Lent is a time of renewal in preparation for the celebration of Easter. But it is too easy and promotes too cheap a grace to focus only on the high points of Palm Sunday and Easter without walking with Jesus through the Darkness of Good Friday, a journey that begins on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a way to place ourselves before God humbled, bringing in our hands no price whereby we can ourselves purchase our salvation. It is a way to confess our total inadequacy before God, to strip ourselves bare of all pretense to righteousness, to come before God in dust and ashes. It is a way to empty ourselves of our false pride, of our rationalizations that prevent us from seeing ourselves as needy creatures, of our "perfectionist" tendencies that blind us to the beam in our own eyes.