Prayer for Lent
Father, look on us, your children. Through the discipline of Lent, help us to grow in our desire for you.
–concluding prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, Tuesday in Week 1 of Lent, Morning and Evening Prayer
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St. Catherine of Siena was a 14th century mystic and doctor of the church. In her book, The Dialogue, she listed four interior qualities we should strive for in order to make our reception of the Holy Eucharist more fruitful. These qualities are faith, love, conversion and desire.
Faith means believing that what we’re receiving in Holy Communion is truly Our Lord Jesus Christ. Love means to give ourselves in service and charity to God and neighbor. Conversion means to turn our hearts away from our sinfulness and our false self and toward Jesus. Desire is an inner longing for communion with God.
All four of these qualities work together to deepen our Eucharistic devotion, but desire provides the motivation to grow in the other qualities. If we don’t really want God, our faith will be weak, our love lukewarm, our conversion half-hearted and our reception of Holy Communion won’t bear much fruit in our lives.
