James Keating has some great thoughts on the practice of Lent from his book Crossing the Desert: Lent and Conversion. Here are a few excerpts:

The word “lent” originated in Middle English and means “springtime.” By turning from sin and embracing moral goodness, by this act of denial, we experience a moral “springtime.”

It is a call to discipline the selfish part of the self and develop selflessness. This selfish part of the self needs to fast and do penance by visiting the “desert” of Lent and thus foster a growing dependence upon God.

Throughout Lent we either do things or refrain from doing things in order to become detached from the selfish self and attached to God alone.

Will we give up our agenda when love and moral goodness require it? Or will we cling to the selfish self out of fear that our own demands will be unmet?

The need to trust God is so paramount to moral and spiritual growth that a powerful religious symbol developed and became enshrined in Scripture to characterize this trust. This symbol is the desert. the desert immediately brings to mind aridity and aloneness – a vast, dry, isolated experience. It is this symbol, however, that carries the strongest of all claims: if you dare to come into the desert and open your heart to God – invite God to be God in God’s full providence – you will know salvation. The desert becomes the stage for God to woo us, to call the Church into union with God’s own self.

The season of Lent becomes a desert experience for us so we will come to depend upon God.

God’s providence does not depend upon our ability to provide for ourselves and / or control the activities of others or ourselves. It only demands that we be available to God working in us.

Lent asks whether we trust in God alone. Can we abandon the illusion of human self-sufficiency and live in obedience to God alone?

In Lent, God encourages the beloved to look again, to feel again, to trust again. ‘You will lose nothing by seeking me and being with me. All of your heart’s desires will be satisfied; just abide with me now in trust.’ What appears at first as barren to the desert entrant, soon discloses itself to be filled with blooms of new life. Hence the paradox of the spring-desert image of Lent. Here is the power of God in its utmost: Where one thought there was no life, God brings life.

In this way, the desert is the end of self-sufficiency and the beginning of communion.