Hi, I'm Edward Sree, and welcome to all things Catholic Catholic where real faith meets real life.

Hi and welcome back to the show Lent is upon us. you believe and I gotta tell you I am already in

great pain I am so sore but it doesn't have to do with Lent it has to do with me going

to the gym with my teenage boy. So we've been going to the gym recently and he's really big into

weightlifting which I'm not done in a good five years or so so I'm just starting to get back into it but our first day of

doing weightlifting together was this last weekend and he's telling me I'm

going to lift this many pounds dad I'm going to do 13 reps I'm going to do it three

times I'm like okay all right well yeah I'm going to do 13 reps, I'm going to do it three times, I'm like, okay.

I'm sure I could do it because I got to prove that I can lift as much as my son can.

So he does his 13 reps and I go right under there and I do my 13 reps and I'm okay I did it yeah I can keep up with him then he does his next 13 and now I try 13 and oh about halfway through I am dying I'm barely getting up off and after eight I just had to stop and then he does his next 13 and now he's all right dad can you do it?

I'm like okay so I get on went under there and I'm pushing and pushing and pushing and I didn't hit 13 I

barely got it up there halfway through so I'm sore because I probably overdid it I

was pushing myself too much and and it was all because I felt like I had to prove you know that the old man still has it.

But you know sometimes we can do that with Lent.

Sometimes we can try to develop some type of Lenton program for ourselves to try to prove ourselves before God or to prove ourselves to to ourselves maybe just to kind of show that you know I if I do these things then then that makes

me feel good that I'm a really good Catholic I'm a strong Catholic and and that could

be dangerous I remember years ago I came up with a really elaborate plan for my Lenten journey. I think I had like 12

or 16 things I was gonna do. I remember I wrote it out in a little

notebook. I was going to do this fasting, do these sacrifices, this kind of

mortification, and do this reading, spiritual reading, an extra prayer, and helping

other people. I have all these things I was going to do and I was so

excited and couldn't wait to tell my spiritual director about all the things I was

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