More than a few of us have given some thought to how we’re going to celebrate this holy season. A lot of us will take an easy way out and just renew the Lenten penance that we did last year...and the year before...and the year before that.

Often we come to the end of Lent no better than we were at the beginning. Our Lenten discipline is far from this strict.  The Muslim Lent during the “holy month of Ramadan” and the “Buddhist Lent of three months are far stricter than our “Lenten Season”.

The meaning of sacrifice has become diluted. For a child, a sacrifice might be to go without a video game for a day or two. Adults might give up a little candy or beverage.

How will we get ready for Lent? Will anything be signifi­cantly different in our lifestyle during the forty days of Lent?

From the outset Lent was lived as the season of immediate preparation for Baptism, to be solemnly administered during the Easter Vigil. The whole of Lent was a journey towards this important encounter with Christ.

We have already been baptized but Baptism is often not very effective in our daily life.  Conversion is never once and for all but is an interior journey through the whole of life.

"To be converted" means seeking God, moving with God, docilely following the teachings of his Son, Jesus Christ; to be converted is not a work for self-fulfillment because we are not the architect of his own eternal destiny. We did not make ourselves. Conversion consists in freely and lovingly accepting to depend in all things on God, to depend on LOVE. This is not dependence but freedom.

Benedict XVI proposes that Lent be a time to fast from words and images, and to create a space for silence He said: "Lent should be a time of fasting from words and images, because we need a little silence, a little space, without being constantly bombarded with images. We need to create spaces of silence."