We’re approaching the anniversary of that week when everything changed. Sports were canceled. Schools closed. Stacks of papers and cups of half-drunk coffee sat on desks like monuments to a suddenly-gone era.

While some norms have returned, many more have not. In this year of loss, it can feel like an extra challenge to consider a liturgical season of loss, also.

“How can we rouse the will to practice Lent—its deprivations, its renunciations—after a long Lenten year?” writes Jen Pollock Michel in “Lent Lifts Us Up Where We Belong.” Michel explains that Lent does not drive us deeper into the numbness or pain we feel this year. Rather, it provides us with an opportunity to turn to Christ.

Whether we’ve denied ourselves a pleasure like chocolate or television for these 40 days, or we’re just trying to make it from one moment to the next, may we accept the Lenten invitation into a deeper connection with Jesus.