Lent–A Powerful Reminder

Lent, the most important Christian season of the year, officially began yesterday. With all the tumult and all the elation (depending on what side one may fall) it’s a good time to reflect on what is important in this world and the next.

A bit of important background–I am a Catholic. My mother was Irish Catholic, my father Greek Orthodox, so we like to say I am best known as a “drunken philosopher.” Growing up, the Catholic School was just two blocks from our home and so I, and my four siblings (yep, 5 of us, and we were definitely not in the top tier of kid rearing in our neighborhood) trudged off (of course uphill in the snow most days) to Holy Cross Grade School. Each day began with a Mass and woe be to you if you came late as Sister Mary Gloria, a Dominican Nun and school principal, stood watch. Being late was not simply a sin, it was a sin that Sister Gloria dutifully marked on your permanent record. My hope is that the record has been lost before I arrive to greet the Sister in my next life.

I begin with that bit of background because everything I say must be tempered by it. I’ve become accustomed to the jocularity with which various pastors make appropriate fun of a Catholic’s lack of biblical understanding. My brother, now an Elder in Idaho’s largest and fastest growing Protestant congregation, continually reminds me that my biblical knowledge is akin to a second grader claiming mastery of physics–i.e. not much. So, please, remember the biblical admonition not to judge me (leave that to a higher authority). Or, as a former Judge myself I am aware of the admonition–someday the Judge of judges will judge the judge.

But back to Lent. Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season with a solemn Mass, followed by placing the sign of the cross on the forehead of the Catholic with the invocation–“from dust to dust”, or something similar. A rather unbridled reminder that the greatest truth of life is our mortality in this world and the greatest Truth of Christianity that we trust in the reward of the next.

When you’re a fourth grader hearing “from dust to dust, from ashes to ashes”, you NEVER forget it. It’s one of those thunderbolts that hits you at some age–you will die. We all remember when we first recognize that truth, and for a Catholic, the start of Lent is almost certainly that day. For me that was then stamped indelibly on my brain when for the next forty days (ending on Easter) we would not only attend Mass (fearing Sister Gloria or God, in that order) but also, we watched Monsignor Wissing pray the Stations of the Cross. He would dutifully kneel on the cement in front of each station of the Cross, the Stations reflect the Passion of Jesus Christ and are generally depicted in statues or pictures in or near every Catholic Church. This was made wildly poignant for me because in my eyes Msg Wissing was roughly 150 years old and could barely walk. But there he was, each and every day, suffering through the stations of the cross in front of 300-400 Holy Cross grade school kids. That made mortality a second place behind the suffering of those Stations of the Cross.

Now, in retrospect, I think often of Msg Wissing and the Stations each Lent. Because, while I certainly did not understand it then, I now appreciate that the difficulty he had each day mirrored, in a small way, that of Jesus. And I think Msg Wissing appreciated it’s unmistakable message and appreciated the lesson he would leave with each of us.

Lent, for me, is a time of reflection. A time to think about who we are and what we have become. A time to contemplate and find peace in prayer. And then the glorious resurrection–the Passion and Easter. In this year it’s a good time to reflect on all we have been given and to think about how we might, in some small or large way, do God’s work.

Oh, and one other thing. No matter what may happen in this culture of ours, I cannot make myself eat meat on Friday (it’s a Catholic thing) and I am never late to Mass (may Sister Gloria’s memory last forever).

Judge Jim Troupis

Retired Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge. President Trump’s attorney in 2020. Speaker, columnist, talk radio guest, father, grandfather and fisherman.