By André Lesperance
I love broccoli.
I really love Brussels sprouts. Especially the way my wife sometimes prepares them, mixed with some bacon and maple syrup!
Don’t get me wrong. I still love me a good ole’ greasy McDonald’s meal from time to time, but the enjoyment of French fries and vegetables are different experiences. A Micky D’s binge can properly be described, for me, as a sort of “guilty pleasure.” Along with my temporary satiation comes that nagging awareness that I’ve just filled my body with something that’s pretty terrible for me. If I manage to forget this fact, my body usually reminds me with rumblings and aches within the hour.
Not so with vegetables. While it may be (much) less exciting or addictive, the experience of enjoying healthy food is of another level of “good.” There’s no downside. It contributes to everything good for our brains and bodies. And to the one who has acquired the taste for vegetables, eating them is delightful.
Some things in God’s kingdom, like prayer, justice, meekness, humility, repentance, generosity, and self-control, can be acquired tastes. In our immaturity, even though we may well be saved by grace and forgiven of our sins, we still often prefer the “taste” of many vices over that of virtue. Our concupiscence remains. At times, we manage to fight back against our urges to sin, and at other times, we dive in with guilty pleasure, and then run back to the Lord in repentance. In his love and mercy, he never tires of lifting us back up—thanks be to God! But let us never think that this situation describes the fullness of life and freedom in Christ! No; God gave us spiritual taste buds, so to speak, that can mature with repeated exposure to grace, virtue, and all that is good. We may have to choke down some vegetables we don’t like much at first, things like faithfulness to prayer or giving money away or trying to bear wrongs patiently or sharing a faith story with someone else, but before we know it, we find ourselves enjoying the taste of these kingdom ways more and more. They’re so deeply good for us—and for those around us!
We can actually get somewhere in victory over sin and vice! We can experience not merely a white-knuckled, last-minute victory of self-control over the pull of pornography or gluttony or ranting in anger, but distaste for these very things, such that leaving them behind becomes . . . dare we say . . . easy! Or at least easier than before. This is true freedom: not merely to hold our noses and force down God’s laws but to come over time to relish their sweetness.
Do not be discouraged if your taste buds are not yet fully acclimated to all that is good, true, and beautiful. None of us are there yet. But this is the road of transformation upon which we all travel as Jesus-followers. Jesus called it the narrow gate(see Matthew 7:13-14), and it leads to “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). Our ongoing transformation consists in acquiring God’s own tastes. As we grow “in union with Jesus, we seek what he seeks and we love what he loves” (Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, 267).
Not only do we grow to acquire the tastes of Jesus and his kingdom, but in doing so we also become “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), or what St. Paul called “the aroma of Christ” (see 2 Corinthians 2:15). We season the world with the tastes and fragrance of God’s love through our imperfect but Spirit-filled witness and actions, so that others too can better acquire the tastes of the kingdom.
Lent is the great season of acquiring better tastes. We let go of some good but lesser things, in order to increase our hunger for even better things—and for God himself. That’s how hungers work, don’t they? If I eat ten Swedish Fish (yum!) before dinner, I’m less hungry for the meal and the healthy stuff just doesn’t taste as good. But if I’m good and hungry when I sit down to a simple healthy meal, I enjoy it all the more.
The same can be true on a spiritual plane. Are we so filled up with lesser goods that we no longer have much desire for some quiet time with the God who loves us? Are we so satiated with things and activities that our spiritual tastebuds for the Eucharist or for serving our neighbor or for helping the poor, have gone dormant?
The disciplines of Lent, just like all spiritual practices given to us by Christ and the Church, are not merely boxes to check to say or think we were a good Catholic boy or girl. They are invitations to starve a few of our “candy” taste buds (literally or figuratively) in order to long for and be more satisfied with God and God’s will for us. For “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
As we begin Lent, consider which spiritual tastes you want to acquire a little more of to help you savor the joy of Easter.
