Twenty Something

A monthly column for young adults

By Christina Capecchi

Getting spiritually fit: The heavy lifting of Lent

Climbing back onto the exercise bandwagon – and staying aboard – is one of my Lenten resolutions. It began with a day of reckoning on the heels of Fat Tuesday: a fitness assessment.

The very term made me nervous, although the physical trainer Megan assured me it would be low-key, “just a few quick exercise tests to see where you’re at.”

Soon Megan discovered exactly where I’m at – where my arms are at, where my waist is at, where my thighs are at. She recorded the numbers silently, leaving me to wonder what she made of my girth.

Megan listed ways to gauge fitness: pounds, inches, blood pressure, and the Body Mass Index, a person’s weight compared with her height. We can measure our exertion: the speed of our mile, the heft of a weight, the number of repetitions. And we count our consumption: calories, fat grams, sodium milligrams, cholesterol levels. There is no shortage of metrics to pin on our physical health.

This is an apt time for me to return to the elliptical and set to the sweaty business of burning and toning. I’m one of 4 million couch potatoes who have been loafing through the winter in one of those Snuggies, designed to give just enough range of motion to grab the remote control and dig into a Pringles can. The only information the giant fleece reveals is the fact that you possess ankles and wrists, which makes a few extra pounds in the middle not only permissible, but snugglier.

My meeting with Megan confirmed that’s been the case. It seems like a wise strategy, to begin gym memberships with an appraisal of how unfit the members are, giving them a clear reason to return often.

Perhaps the Catholic Church would boost its attendance if it assessed our spiritual fitness, proclaiming numbers that would startle us onto a kneeler.

Of course, our spiritual life is immeasurable. That’s the beauty of it – and the danger; there are no clear-cut indicators to halt us in our tracks. There is no Sin/Grace Index. No pride monitor. No repent-o-meter. We don’t track hours at Eucharistic Adoration versus hours spend gossiping.

In the absence of such markers, we must strive for constant spiritual growth, ever watchful for ruts and backward slides.

It isn’t a matter of endurance, how many rosaries we can hammer out. It’s about making prayer regular and learning to listen, seeking God’s will and embracing it.

As young adults we’re accustomed to black-and-white, hard-and-fast numerical assessments – the number of Facebook friends, the Amazon rank of a book, the number of results yielded from a split-second Google search.

But faith defies figures. We don’t just forgive seven times, St. Matthew reminds us this month, but seventy times seven. At every opportunity. Again and again. Uncounted, unquestioned.

That’s how the slow work of spiritual development begins.

Pope Benedict XVI recently reflected on our need for strong interior lives. “Dear young people,” he said, “prepare yourselves to face the important stages of life with spiritual commitment, building every one of your projects on the solid foundations of fidelity to God.”

It is a sweaty but sacred Lenten journey: moving forward, in leaps and scooches, ever closer to Christ.

Christina Capecchi is a freelance writer from Inver Grove Heights, Minn. E-mail her at christinacap@gmail.com.