Are You Ready?

Lenten observances are always a matter of serious reflection and prayer beforehand for me. I usually start when everyone else is making New Year’s resolutions. The way life has been lately, I am striving to make my plans sacrificial in nature without causing undue stress because of unrealistic expectations.
I’ve given up coffee for Lent before. This was a real struggle for me, but I had lots of moral support. The past few years I have given up chocolate, which is especially difficult when one of the faculty gives Girls Scout cookies to my office. (He buys from every child who asks, but doesn't eat GS cookies himself.) Given a recent conversation with a friend in which my recent dietary habits were questioned, I realize that giving up chocolate or caffeine would not be practical this year. Moderation is a better goal than restriction; however, that's too indefinite for a Lenten intention. Instead, I will keep Wednesdays meatless in addition to Fridays.
I started praying the Liturgy of the Hours occasionally almost three years ago by visiting a local religious community for Vespers. Around the same time, Vespers were added to the end of Saturday Adoration at my parish, and thanks to the seminarian in residence, we had sung Vespers on Sunday for a while. Two years ago I took an online course about the Divine Office--its origins and evolution as well as study of the liturgy itself and how to pray it. Since every community I’ve ever visited has slight differences in how the pray the Divine Office, I appreciate knowing the liturgical norms and the possible variation. I try to pray Lauds and Compline daily, with Vespers in community on the weekends. I have the one volume Christian Prayer breviary used at my parish. My friends and I all have different quirks about praying the Hours. MFF starts with Office of Readings and works through the hours of the day (Office of Readings, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline), with one daytime hour if time permits. I prefer to pray the Hour proper to the time of day; so if I work late, I skip Vespers. I haven’t been good about setting aside time to pray the Hours lately, and my schedule this term doesn’t make daily mass feasible. So for Lent I bought the Liturgy of the Hours, Volume II. I intend to pray 4 Hours (Office of Readings, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline) daily at the appropriate times. This means I’ll be bringing my breviary with me almost everywhere for the next 6.5 weeks.
Having put much reflection into my choices, I hope that these practices will be fruitful.

Now I’m going to eat some pancakes. And you should too!