A car from the next lane cuts in front of you, and you curse; or you give in and eat that last chocolate in the box leftover from Valentine’s day; or you yield to the temptation of social media, and end up doomscrolling when you should be reading a passage from the Bible… In short, it’s not even half-way through Lent, and one way or another, maybe you’ve broken your Lenten resolution.
What happens now? Should you go to Confession? Consider yourself a failure, give up, and hope for better luck next year? Or something else?
A metaphor might help us to remember what these sacrifices are for in the first place and what to do now.
1Lenten sacrifices or resolutions aren’t the essence of Lent
Yes, sacrifice is a part of Lent; it’s a penitential season that calls us to repentance and conversion. In order to turn our hearts towards God in heaven and in our neighbor, we have to start by recognizing our disordered attachment to ourselves.
That’s easy enough; we just have to look at our sins and our selfish behavior. Then we have to seek to fight that attachment so we can shift the focus beyond ourselves, through the three pillars of Lent: fasting (self-denial), prayer (listening to God and asking for his grace), and charity (doing good to others).
Our Lenten resolution (whether a sacrifice like giving up social media, or a commitment to prayer or charity) fits into this context; it’s a tool to help us in our process of conversion. We deny ourselves in reparation for our sins and to free ourselves of our self-love so we can love God and others more.
However, the resolution as such is only a tool. We shouldn’t be obsessed with it. So if we fail, if we drop the tool, we just pick it back up, keeping our eye on the goal. If we keep failing, maybe we need to reevaluate the tool we’ve chosen and pick one more suited to our current situation.
God will be pleased just by the fact that you keep trying.
2If it isn’t hard, it’s not much of a sacrifice
If we fulfill our Lenten resolution perfectly throughout all 40 days, maybe we didn’t choose it well. It should be something that really takes some effort on our part, and reminds us that we can do nothing without God. Lent isn’t about performative fulfillment of a resolution we can brag about doing perfectly; it’s about recognizing and taking on, with the help of divine grace, our own imperfection and weakness in loving God and others.
3Should you go to confession?
Breaking your personal Lenten resolution as such isn’t a sin. If you’re giving up social media to dedicate more time to reading Scripture, and you check your Instagram account, it’s not a sin. However, if your resolution directly involves avoiding a particular sin — such as swearing or looking at immoral videos on the internet — and you fail, you should confess that sin, which may be venial or mortal, depending on the usual conditions.
In short, the Lenten resolution isn’t an obligation as such, so breaking it isn't a sin per se. There are other things, though, that are specific Lenten obligations, part of the Precepts of the Church: fasting and abstinence from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and abstinence from meat on Fridays during Lent. If you intentionally and knowingly omit these obligations, it's deliberately sinful, and Confession is in order.
We are also obligated by the Precepts of the Church to go to Confession at least once a year (as an absolute minimum). While we should go at least as often as we are aware of having committed a mortal sin, it’s good to go more often to confess our venial sins, and Lent is a great time for that.
So, while breaking your Lenten resolution as such doesn’t mean you have to go to Confession just for that reason, it’s a good idea to go to Confession during Lent anyway. And if you’ve failed in your Lenten promise, you can bring it up too, even if it’s not serious — like eating that last chocolate to deal with the Monday blues.
