In the fourth of her reflections for Lent, Joan Chittister reminds us that what matters is not how much success we achieve but how well we have loved. Somewhere along the line, after the bubonic plague led to the death in the fourteenth century of half the people of Europe, the Lenten preparation for Easter’s great “Alleluia” took a serious and morbid turn. A great deal of soul-searching went with the question of why the Black Death could possibly have happened. Surely, it was a judgement on our sins. And if our infidelity to the will of God had been the reason for God’s anger with us, then surely some kind of reparation has to be made? Repentance and sorrow for sin had always been at the heart of the Lenten season, of course. But in the Middle Ages, Lent came to