Lent, and most especially Holy Week, is meant to be a time of prayer, repentance, and real interior change. It is a sacred season given to us by Holy Mother Church so that we may slow down, examine our lives honestly, and return to God with humility. Yet a subtle temptation creeps in. Without even noticing it, some of us begin to measure our faith by how busy we are, filling our days with religious tasks and quietly assuming that activity must mean growth.
We must say this clearly: service to the Church is good. Wanting to give more during the most solemn time of the year is not wrong. But we must look carefully at what actually happens. Church decorators can become consumed with planning floral arrangements, preparing the Altar of Repose, coordinating textiles, lights, and countless details. Choir members spend long evenings rehearsing and return home exhausted, still carrying work and family responsibilities. In places such as the Philippines, the camarero and those entrusted with devotional images carry their duties with visible excitement and pride. These roles are not sinful; indeed, they can be beautiful acts of love. But when they drain all our energy and leave no space for personal prayer, they cease to lead us to conversion and begin, quietly, to replace it.
Make no mistake: busyness can look generous and committed, yet it can also conceal a distracted heart. The devil does not always tempt through obvious wrongdoing; sometimes he tempts through what appears good. The Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent recounts the Temptation of Christ in the desert. The first temptation was simple and seemingly harmless: “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread” (Matthew 4:3). After forty days of fasting, the suggestion sounded practical, even reasonable. Yet it was an invitation to act apart from the Father’s will.
In much the same way, we can be pulled into endless organising, decorating, rehearsing, and preparing. Everything appears holy from the outside, yet inside the soul grows weak and neglected. We become skilled at religious activity while neglecting the very pillars of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
We must therefore ask ourselves: what really is Lent for us? Is it merely a season of ceremonies and religious pageantry? Have we turned it into a stage where devotion is visible and measurable, rather than a desert where the heart is purified and converted? Yes, the days leading to Holy Week can be exhausting, especially for our deeply committed priests, servers, and volunteers. But if this penitential season leaves us exhausted yet unchanged, then something has gone wrong.
The problem is not generosity; rather it begins when our service becomes an escape from the interior work of the soul. Some may argue that they are simply giving their best for God — and that desire is good. Yet generosity without order becomes imbalance. We need time in church and in devotional practices, yes — but we also need time alone before God, in silence, in examination, and in repentance.
Lent was never meant to be a season of frantic religious effort. It is meant to draw us into the desert with Christ so that we may emerge purified. What good are the flower arrangements if our soul remains in disarray? What good are images of the Saints clothed in beautiful embroidered vestments if we ourselves are not clothed in grace? What good are solemn liturgies if our hearts remain burdened by unrepented sin? We risk becoming what Christ condemned in the Pharisees: whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but decaying within.
Without time to be still before God, even sincere service becomes hollow. We may reach Easter having given much outwardly, yet realising that we have not allowed God to change us inwardly.
The challenge, then, is not to abandon service but to purify it. We must learn to serve from silence rather than from pressure, from recollection rather than from excitement. We must choose prayer even when there is more to organise, more to decorate, more to rehearse. Only when activity flows from an interior life does it bear fruit. Otherwise, Lent becomes noise instead of conversion. But when we return to stillness, humility, and honest repentance, the season becomes what it was always meant to be: not a performance of devotion, but a demanding and beautiful journey that prepares the heart for the joy of the Resurrection.