Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
Asking people who face anywhere from a half-an-hour to an hour or more of commuting in bumper-to-bumper traffic only to arrive at a very trying job, asking them to add something in the way of penance during Lent seems callous or the rumination of someone living in an unreal world. I'm tempted to think that such suggestions about adding some penance during Lent were thought up by people living lives devoid of the ordinary stresses involved in making a living. Their placid lives may have needed the seasoning of some humanly devised and artificial struggle.
In any case, most of us, it seems to me, should not look upon Lent as a time for some unusual practice but for either patience with what we must do or a more generous fulfillment of what family, work and world already require of us. In other words, brightening up, tightening up, cleaning up, improving the way we do what God requires of us.