Lenten greetings

I think the thing I enjoy about Lent is the fact that it gives me an opportunity to focus on my spiritual practice. It pushes the fact that I, we, are Catholic to the front of stack of concepts about who we are. On Ash Wednesday, despite the Gospel reading for today and the instruction from Jesus that "when you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut your door, pray to your Father" (see the reading here), I get to wear my Catholicism right there above my eyes. This is a reminder not only to me, but to anyone I come in contact with. A reminder of the season, a reminder of the sacrifice Jesus made for us, and most certainly a reminder of our mortality. Lent takes the soil of my life and churns it up so that the bottom layers can be exposed to the air and to the light. I have to wonder why we need an opportunity to do this, and why we can't make this part of what we do each and every day.