Dear Friends: As we approach lent, we can already anticipate a deeper call to conversion. One of the famous calls to conversion is from the book of Genesis when the Lord calls Abraham. What is fascinating is that Abraham (or Abram as he was called at this point) was from a family in Ur who worshipped foreign gods. God calls Abraham to leave his fathers land and to go into the land which the Lord will point out to him. Spiritually, this point is salient. In order for Abraham to leave his former gods behind, he had to abandon all attachments to them. God recognized that if Abraham remained in his family’s land, then he would fall back into idol worship. It was only after abandoning all of his former pagan ways that he could genuinely worship the Lord. Thus, Abraham’s conversion entailed uprooting his family and moving to a physically distant location so that he may not fall back into his former sinful ways. For us during lent, we should keep this point in mind. We will attempt to reform our lives by turning away from sin and towards the Lord during this lenten season. This requires a deep and serious uprooting of sin. We must recognize that if we remain around the near occasions of sin, then we shall fall back into our former ways. Repentance requires a total effort and a complete reorientation of ones life. After one goes to confession, which we should do during lent, one should reflect upon ways in which they can avoid falling back into sin. This may entail changes with our electronic devices, changes with how much time we spend in prayer and spiritual reading, changes to our night or morning routine, or an increase in our penitential practices. The fact remains that repentance is hard and the temptation to fall back into previous sinful behaviors remains strong. Like Abraham we must leave behind our former idols so that we can go forth and worship the Lord. This entails a radical reorientation to ones life and intentional changes to how we go about our day.