Four Focal Points of the Logic of Lent

At the beginning of Lent, I would like to share with you the following thoughts from my own reflection. I had hoped to post them earlier, but we've been having a lot of problems with the internet connection in Torit.

The Cleansing of the Temple

Fighting for Our Freedom

One of the major biblical experiences the Church places before us during Lent is the “exodus” of the Israelites from slavery into freedom recounted in the book with that same title. It is meant to be a paradigm for us Christians in our journey into the “glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rm 8: 21). Sin enslaves us (Jn 8:34) but the truth that is Jesus sets us free. The theme of freedom was reinforced for me in the recent viewing of the 2009 Italian made-for-television film: Bakhita: the African Saint. Bakhita was literally a slave, an experience that not only left her scarred physically from the beatings she received, but also somewhat wounded emotionally and crippled psychologically in terms of her own sense of self worth and dignity. The film clearly portrays how it was in her encounter with Christ, who “became a slave” (Phil 2:7), that she discovered her worth and value and received the freedom to assert her dignity.

One of the fundamental questions we have to answer for ourselves is whether freedom consists in a lack of constraint to gratify our immediate desires and short term preferences, or whether it’s something much wider and deeper: the ability to choose what we know is true, good and authentically beautiful, to live in love and to fulfill the highest aspirations and potential of the human heart. Part of the challenge that those who live in the developed world face is that as a result of our relative wealth and comfort we create dependencies out of the many superfluous things that are so readily available: types of food and drink, air conditioning, electronic gadgets, entertainment, over the counter medicines, clothing, etc. Conveniences become necessities, and all these things together become the bricks out of which we build the walls of our own prison cells. We become enslaved to them, unable to live without them. Personal comfort becomes a supreme value, and once it has become our master it turns us into spiritually flabby slugs. The film Wall-E presented a humorously disturbing vision of the human beings of the future: semi-paralyzed blobs who live a virtual life on floating lounge chairs and interact and experience life via personal computer monitors.

Lent is the time to reinvigorate the battle for our freedom, to fight against anything that threatens to diminish or shackle us. It’s time to identify our debilitating dependencies and petty addictions and struggle to break free from them, and above all to break free from sin, which not only diminishes our dignity, but contradicts and erodes it.

The Scourging of Jesus

Confronting the Ugly and Unpleasant Aspects of Our Lives

So much of pop psychology and conventional wisdom has to do with having a positive self image: looking good and feeling good about ourselves. That’s fine as far as it goes, but it becomes problematic and even paralyzing when it involves denial, distortion and dishonesty. All of us have negative attributes and habits which are probably much more evident to others (and certainly to God) that they are to us. They are things that mar the beauty of God’s handiwork in our lives, cause difficulties in relationships and impede our progress and development as human beings. They are small black holes that suck up time, energy, attention and sometimes a lot of money.

Lent is the time to squarely face these blotches. What are they? Christian tradition has identified them as the Seven Deadly Sins, most of which are satellites of selfishness and fueled by fear: laziness, gluttony, lust, greed, pride, vanity, anger.

The Church in her wisdom gives us the tool and the weapons to fight against these tendencies, and in Lent she reminds us of them once again: prayer and the Sacraments; fasting, penance and self-denial; generosity, acts of kindness and works of mercy. While a therapeutic approach can be helpful in dealing with some life’s struggles, it can completely overlook and exclude some very basic anthropological remedies to the dilemmas of human existence. The Gospel has a profound realism about and a deep syntony with human nature. And when the Church, basing herself on the teaching of Jesus Himself in Matthew 6, offers us these practices, she does so drawing from this wellspring of evangelical and anthropological wisdom.

In the human heart there are deep drives and desires which at times we are barely aware of; they get buried and blunted in the course of life and need to be excavated, shaken and sharpened. The most profound of these is the desire for God. Along with that is the desire for honesty, integrity, virtue, purity… On a subliminal level we sense the disparity of our lives as they are and as we deeply desire them to be, and this produces a kind of generalized desperation and despair. These fundamental practices of Lent are meant to rouse, focus and give and renewed vigor and impetus to these desires, so they can be harnessed in our struggle to be authentic Christians and followers of Jesus, and to eliminate the contradictions that erode our humanity.

Gethsemane

Facing the Serious Questions and Somber Realities of Life

One of the downsides of a life of increasing digitalized technology is the possibility of living a completely distracted existence. There’s always some form of stimulation or another (visual, audio, tactile) to keep us from turning our attention to those disturbing, unresolved questions that lurk on the periphery of our consciousness. The search for an answer to these questions, however, is what has occupied the great minds and shaped the great cultures and civilizations of human history.

Death and personal mortality. Pain and suffering. The attraction to sin and the problem of evil. The matter of my ultimate destiny.

Gethsemane (detail)

Perhaps on a daily basis a good deal of our time and energy is devoted to fulfilling the tasks associated with work, economic survival and commitments associated with our state in life, and most practical decisions are made on that basis. Still, unless we take the time and make the effort to grapple with weightier matters we run the risk of living completely superficial and exclusively functional lives, empty of any real meaning, purpose or direction. In that situation we are particularly vulnerable when some form of suffering or tragedy inevitably strikes: we find ourselves afloat on a stormy sea without a compass.

It is most of all in the Passion of Jesus that the mystery of human weakness, suffering, sinfulness, mortality and ultimate destiny become clear and resolved – not necessarily in terms of limited human logic, but rather through the logic of love: the One who created us in love, and destines us for love, enters into the self-imposed shipwreck of our freedom and rescues us by His presence which passes with us through death into eternal life.

That is why the Church particularly recommends meditation on the Passion of Jesus by way of the Stations of the Cross, reading the passion accounts of the four Gospels and praying the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary during Lent. It is there that we find answers to the great questions of life, answers capable of sustaining us in times of difficulty and bearing us to our final destiny.

The Kiss of Judas

The Mysterious Negative Undertow of Lent

This is something I’m not quite sure how to name or describe. But I’ve experienced it often enough, really almost every Lent that I can remember, in my own life and in that of others that I feel sure that it’s not a result of my own subjective perspective or imagination, and that it’s worthwhile mentioning.

For some reason, more than at other times, during Lent things seem to go wrong, get worse, fall apart. Crises erupt, unexpected problems surface, complications arise, difficulties emerge, road blocks appear. Even the spiritual practices we had planned to carry out during these forty days seem to get frustrated. It’s almost as though a wrench were thrown into the whole thing at the beginning. There seems to be some kind of “negative energy” or “destructive force” at work.

I’m even less sure of how to explain how this works or what causes it. But I think it serves a purpose. It produces a heightened awareness of the struggle between light and darkness, death and life, truth and absurdity, chaos and order. In other words it reinforces the gravity of our dilemma, and what’s really at stake. It also gives us a keener insight into our own weakness and vulnerability and a more powerful realization of how much we need Someone to help us if we are not to be defeated in this struggle. It forces us to fall on our face and beg for mercy, knowing that our very lives and destinies hang in the balance.

Perhaps this experience of “deconstruction” (as one author calls it) is the most valuable fruit of Lent. It is a mysterious participation in His death that opens the way for a new experience of His resurrection, a real
new beginning and point of departure at Easter.

Peter Denies Jesus

To donate online, please CLICK HERE.