Lent, the liturgical year shows us, is about the holiness that suffering can bring. It is about bringing good where evil has been, about 
bringing love where hate has been. It is about the transformation of the base to the beautiful.
But don’t be fooled: Lent is not about masochism. It is about being willing to suffer for something worth suffering for, as Jesus did, without allowing ourselves to be destroyed by it.
Suffering is a stepping-stone to maturity. It moves us beyond fantasy to facts. We know now that everything in life will not go our way. We will not simply get what we want or avoid what we do not. And we will know when the price is worth paying or not.
The point is that no one escapes suffering. It is part of the rhythm of life, part of the process of living. The question, then, is, for what are we willing to suffer?
Because suffering is part of our mortality, it is important to spend it well. Jesus, contending with the leaders of the synagogue at the cost of His life, in order to bring the synagogue to the truth of its own tradition, we can see, is worth suffering for indeed. And many others, we know, have done the same for sake of truth and justice. Martin Luther King, Jr. did. So did Francis of Assisi. So did Catherine of Siena and Joan of Arc. There are simply some things worth dying for as well as worth living for.
To live for the lesser things of life is to risk not really living at all. Real life is pungent with risk, with the willingness to spend all the intensity we have for one great, lasting moment of creation—like childbearing, like human liberation, like being a living witness to justice and truth and love and faith, the greater things of life.
Lent is the season that teaches us that darkness may overtake us but will not overcome good as long as we doggedly refuse to give in to our lesser selves, as long as we refuse to become the very things we say we hate.
In the end, the suffering of Jesus is the salvation of the world. It is salvation of all those who see what is needed in the world and, like Jesus, do not shrink from pursuing it.
—from The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister (Thomas Nelson)
