Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

Nature’s forces and instincts are wild. It is by harnessing and controlling them that we get most useful products. We use controlled fire for cooking food. A motor is a controlled explosion. Dammed water gives us hydroelectricity. We harness wind in a sail or windmill. What of a harnessed atom?
Our personal progress and learning process come from control of personal egotism. Walking, talking, writing, eating, driving, flying, games and sports all depend on control. One does not win by “doing what comes naturally.”
This is the meaning of Lent. If we control our appetites, our love of comforts and pleasures, we can achieve self mastery and become pleasing to God and man. “If you don’t deny yourself you will never be a soul of prayer.”( Josemaria Escriva,The Way, Pt 172)