March 11, 2026

By Father William Muench
NCC columnist

As we now approach the middle of Lent, I believe it is a good time to consider how we are doing with Lent. It is time to put some new spirit into our Lenten promises – the prayers and mortifications that make up our program. So, how are you doing? Have you found a better relationship with the Lord Jesus? Do you think more about Jesus than ever before?

I know that during Lent, Jesus must be the center of our attention. Each Sunday we read the wonderful stories of the Lord. These stories give us the opportunity to remember how much the Lord cares about us. Remember the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus? In this story Jesus demonstrates His divinity to the apostles and to us. Jesus finds strength and support from God the Father through Moses and Elijah. Jesus promises that kind of support to each of us; he will walk with us no matter what life brings us.

In this second part of Lent, we will continue to discover the love of our Lord through the special Gospel stories of the Samaritan woman, of the man born blind, of the raising to life of Lazarus. Each Sunday we will be immersed in each of these stories, remembering that each of us are part of the story. Jesus wants us to recognize his great love for us and prepare us to walk with him through his Passion; we support him as we again experience the Lord’s sufferings and death.

This is the time to make this sacred time of Lent a holy transformation of who we are. This is the time to renew our readiness to become more alive in the Lord. This is our time to become more like Jesus.

I went searching for a Lent story, and someone offered me this, “The Cracked Bowl.” In a small village, there lived an elderly woman who walked each day to the well with two clay bowls balanced on a pole across her shoulders. One bowl was perfect. The other had a long crack running down its side. Each day by the time she reached home, the cracked bowl had leaked half its water. It felt ashamed.

One morning, as she walked the dusty road, the cracked bowl finally spoke. “I am sorry,” it said, “I am broken. I cannot do what I was made to do. I waste what you carry.” The old woman smiled gently and said nothing. When they reached home, she invited the bowl to look back along the path they had walked. Along one side of the road – its side – bright wildflowers were blooming.

“I knew about your crack,” she said. “So, I scattered seeds along the road. Every day you water them. For two years I have gathered these flowers to place before the altar in our little church. Without your weakness, there would be no beauty.”

The bowl was silent. Its flaw had become a gift.

Lent begins with ashes, an admission that we are fragile, cracked vessels. We fast, we pray, we give alms not because we are strong, but because we are not. God does not wait for perfect bowls. He plants seeds along the roads of our weakness. Lent is not about pretending we are whole. It is about walking honestly with our cracksand discovering what God has been growing because of them.