Dcerning Hearts.com presents Crossing the Desert, Lent, and Conversion with Deacon James Keating.

Deacon Keating is the director of theological formation at the Institute for Priestly Formation, located at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

He has led over 400 workshops on moral theology and spirituality

nationwide. He is the author of numerous books, including Crossing the Desert, on which

this series is based. Crossing the Desert, Lent and Conversion with Deacon James Keating.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

Welcome, Deacon Keating.

Thank you.

In the opening chapter, you make a very profound statement, actually, that life in Lent today is life as usual.

But that's not how Lent is supposed to be for us, is it?

Ideally, it's really supposed to be a, well, an oasis.

It's a strange way of saying it, but we are living in a desert every day of our lives. It's easier for us not to think of God than it is for us to think of

him. And so obviously we're in a desert in terms of our cognizance of God's presence.

And Lent is given to us from the church as a great gift.

That here's a resting place, a resting spot, for you to lay down all of the fears and

worries and anxieties and difficulties that the American culture

and capitalism and consumerism, consumerism voiced upon us. And you can lay that all down

for 40 days. And this place, this resting place, is supposed to be different. It's not supposed to just be

life as usual, punctuated by Ash Wednesday and punctuated by Good Friday. The only two times

that most Catholics go to church during Lent, except for the Sundays that we normally go.

Ash Wednesday is usually overflowing, which all people who are ministers in the church always marvel at, because it's not a holy day of obligation.

And there is standing room only like Christmas Eve Mass, a lot of churches.

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