The Church today calls us to repentance, and repentance involves two key steps. First, the recognition of guilt: "It's my fault. I am wounded, I must change my behavior, not someone else". That fault may be objective but, at the very least, there is in me a lack of patience or virtue in dealing with that fault. A particularly good way to repent is through the sacrament of Confession, when, precisely, we blame ourselves - openly, publicly - and not others.
The second aspect is the willingness to do something about it. Some people recognize their guilt but are unwilling to change, either out of hardness of heart or out of desperation. Therefore, repentance implies the hope that it is possible. If God puts the desire in my soul, he will give me the grace to carry it out.
Repentance is probably not very dramatic for most of us, it is climbing the next step towards holiness, the next level. The changes God asks of us in life can be smaller and smaller, even if they are sometimes more and more difficult. What matters is to struggle, even if we fail, and to keep starting over and over again.
In the Gospel, Jesus recommends the three traditional means of conversion: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. With prayer we give more and better time to God. Prayer is the activity of hope. That conversion that we desire but find difficult to achieve begins in prayer, where we place ourselves before God with our weakness so that he may heal and strengthen us. Then comes fasting, saying no to our body, also as prayer for those who suffer. This should have an aspect of solidarity and thus follows almsgiving. We implore God's mercy by striving to show mercy to others, with our time and our money.
Lent has to hurt, at least a little. We must be willing to lose in order to gain: to "lose" some time to pray or to help others, and to lose some bodily pleasure. As Pope Francis once said "Let us not forget that true poverty hurts; no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I am wary of a charity that costs nothing and hurts nothing.".
We can ask Our Lady to give us the courage we need to live Lent well this year, without fear of having resolutions that hurt and struggling to fulfill them. And if we fail, because they are ambitious and challenging, we can invoke God's mercy and help and start again without discouragement.
