Joy in suffering

Today is Ash Wednesday, a day of great penance. Beginning today, the next 40 days till Easter Sunday are going to be very crucial for all Catholics, especially me. Till last year, I abstained myself only from non-vegetarian food. But this year, I have decided to desist from a lot of things – both my favorites as well as things which make me a sinner.

Along with a vegetarian diet, I have decided to forgo one-time meal till Easter. I will skip my daily lunch and along with it, my elixir, my afternoon coffee, which has become such an integral part of my life. I want to give this up as a mark of repentance from all my sins so that I may become the kind of person I want to be.

I will not listen to retro music on 104.8 FM, another thing which I love to do the most. I will not shop for myself – be it books or clothes or anything - and I will not socialize on Facebook and Twitter. I itch for regular status updates and photographs and also keep changing my profile picture all the time. In the next 40 days, I will make sure not that I neither comment on anyone’s status nor renew my own status. I will refrain myself from uploading albums and also not change my profile picture. This I will do to repent for all the sins that I have committed lately.

I am sure that if I give up all my favorites till Easter, Jesus Christ will surely listen to me and forgive all my sins and make me a changed person. While coming to office, I have been reading outside a church since yesterday that “fast and you will receive from God what you ask”. So I want to fast from my sinful habits, anger, and abusive language and screaming at my kids. I want to be a renewed person at the end of these 40-days.

It is always said during our Bible class that there’s no greater joy than suffering and Jesus experienced the greatest joy by suffering on the Cross for all of us. So like Jesus I too want to suffer by giving up everything I like to do and experience the greatest joy of my life – the desire to be a changed person.

The two things that I will continue to do are blogging and reading. I will write down all my thoughts because besides Jesus Himself, I don’t want to share these thoughts with anyone. I want to keep all my ‘sacrifices’ secret because it is also written in the Bible that your right hand should not know what your left hand is doing. So I don’t want to make a big noise about all these and just want to behave as if everything is normal. I just want to be transformed and don’t want anyone to stop me from doing what I have decided. If this will help me to forget my “sins”, I am too very happy of what I have decided.

When I say that I will read, I mean that I will be switching over from Classics to religious/spiritual books so that I will not be getting excited by the ‘lines’ in them and decide to save them for my FB status updates. Like I normally do!!! So the next 40-days are really going to be adjudicating days of my life.

Oh Lord Jesus Christ, please strengthen me so that I may remain firm in all my decisions till Easter.