We are not quite a full week into this Lenten season—a time of cutting away things that hold us back in our Christian lives and of taking up new habits that will draw us closer to God and conform us more closely to the image of Christ. Both the negative (cutting away) and positive (taking up) aspects of Lent require us to break old habits and form new ones.

We find ourselves again this year in the (seemingly) awkward season of pre-Lent: the three weeks whose Sundays on the church calendar have very strange sounding names (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima) and which are not familiar to many growing up in a post Vatican II world. For those of us who follow the historic, ancient church calendar, these Sundays form a turning point and time of preparation for the austerity of Lent.