As Lent starts, Wahlert students and staff refrain from some delicacies of choice in their life for 40 days, to commemorate the 40 days Jesus fasted in the desert. 

Kevin Bradley, ‘24 shares what he is refraining from this Lenten season and how he stays on track with his Lenten promise.

 “I am trying to cut my screen time on my phone in half or like ⅔ as much as I normally would. I chose to give up my screen time because I feel like being on my phone too much kinda separates me from spending my time on better and more productive things, like with my family or just doing something productive. This will allow me to spend more time doing things that will benefit me. What helps me the most is remembering that it is good for me to give it up and Jesus fasted for forty days in the desert, so that kinda keeps me on track,” Bradley said. 

For many it can be difficult to keep their Lenten promise and refrain from temptation. Some may even wonder why we give up things for Lent and why we refrain from meat on Fridays. Religion teacher, Mr. Nathaniel Gee, says, 

“The number one thing that helps me is, in the moment that I find myself tempted with whatever it is I let go of or gave up, I just say, ‘Jesus. Either I’ll say his name or I will say something in my heart or out loud, such as, ‘It’s all for you Jesus’ or ‘Jesus I trust in you.’ And it just has a way of immediately resetting my mindset in the moment,” said Gee. 

“If we go back thousands of years, especially in Jesus’s time, it was very rare occasions that people ate meat and the only people who would eat meat would be very wealthy people and so the food of the poor in his time, and still to this day if you go to third world countries, people who are poor are not eating meat everyday. For third world countries, the food of sustenance that you can get on a regular basis is bread and fish. And so it’s not so much about only refraining from meat as it’s about reconnecting ourselves to the plight of the poor or identifying with the poor, entering into poverty and cutting ourselves off from the luxury of meat, and especially in the western world we can get at any moment,” Gee explains. 

But Lent is about more than giving something up. “I look at Lent as an excuse to work on my relationship with God, and I think especially in our world, I know in my life there are so many distractions that get in the way of my relationships and there’s so many forms of entertainment. if I don’t every year just take a moment to re-evaluate how I spend my time, how I spend my money, and how I spend my attention, then things can creep in that aren’t necessarily bad but don’t necessarily help benefit the things that are most important in my life, especially where love exists. So Lent is the perfect opportunity to identify what those things are and remove them or at least put them in its place, not in a way that makes us suffer only but in a way that makes us benefit in the long term,” said Gee.