The season of Lent was traditionally defined by the “three pillars”: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Yet, while we often embrace the rigors of fasting and the interior introspection of prayer, the third pillar—almsgiving—is frequently treated as a routine obligation rather than transformative. We tend to continue the community service we have always performed, maintaining our existing commitments without allowing them to stretch our spirits.
True Lenten discipline, however, calls for more than just consistency; it calls for a renewal of sight.
When we perform service out of habit, we run the risk of keeping our neighbors at arm’s length. We “give” to a cause, but we do not always “encounter” the person. Taking on something new during Lent—a specific, intentional act of service toward a neighbor—forces us out of our spiritual autopilot. It requires us to move from the abstract concept of “charity” to the concrete reality of “companionship.”
There is a theological truth hidden in the act of helping: to look into the eyes of a neighbor in need is to gaze upon “the image of God.” If we want to understand the soul of the Divine, we must seek it where it is most vulnerably expressed.
Scripture and tradition remind us that God is not found solely in the silence of the desert or the majesty of the cathedral, but in the “distressing disguise” of the poor and the marginalized. By choosing to help another, we are not merely performing a moral duty; we are participating in a mystical exchange. Every hand extended in help is a hand that touches the hem of God’s garment.
This Lent, I feel I should consider moving beyond the service which I have always done and that isn’t much. I should consider seeking out a new way to be present to our community. Whether it is a stranger in the street, a lonely neighbor behind a closed door, or a cause that feels “outside my comfort zone,” God calls me to step toward it.
In the breaking of bread, the sharing of time, and the lifting of burdens, the distance between the human and the holy collapses. If you wish to find God this season, do not look only upward; look outward. To serve is to see, and to see is to know the very heart of God.
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