A joyous Lent?
It isn’t something that can be understand easily.
This past Wednesday, the liturgical churches left ordinary time to enter forty penitential days in the desert with Christ. Today’s Gospel reading returns to the Baptism of the Lord and the beginning of Jesus’ three-year journey to the Cross.
The Gospel of Mark starkly declares “The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert.” (I’m using last year’s Gospel passage for the first Sunday in lent.) The Gospel reading invites us to follow him into the desert of fasting, alms and prayer.
Saint Mark’s verb jolts. And forces us to think about that first sin of Adam and Eve.
It was eating!
Adam and Eve broke the only fast established by the Lord in Eden. That forbidden eating of the fruit caused their own death and that of all Creation. The ensuing devestation and corruption is so vast that only Jesus can restore life. Unless we meditate on him and his passion its impossible to understand what was happening, what he was doing:
I have to redo man in everything. Sin has removed the crown from him,and has crowned him with opprobrium and with confusion; so he cannot stand before my Majesty. Sin has dishonored him, making him lose any right to honors and to glory.
This is why I want to be crowned with thorns – to place the crown on man’s forehead, and to return to him all rights to every honor and glory. Before my Father, my thorns will be reparations and voices of defense for many sins of thought, especially pride; and for each created mind they will be voices of light and supplication, that they may not offend Me.
The Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ
How then there be joy in the midst of such immensely unjust persecution, torture and suffering?
Gibran’s On Joy and Sorrow
is one of the most poignant and disturbing poems I have ever read. Years ago, when I first discovered it, I memorized one line:
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
On Joy and Sorrow
There’s an intrinsic metric suggested here, isn’t there? But more than a rhythm, we recognize the truth of this line with a startled gasp, “Of course this is true!”
The annual season of Lent is here. Forty days that has felt like an endurance test stretching ahead of me, filled as they are with the ‘three pillars’ of prayer, fasting, and alms giving. That is until receiving an email from the Prior at St. Michael’s Abbey and several days later, hearing Father Chris Munoz” homily at the 6:30 AM Mass. First the homily: “Of all the holy seasons in the church, Lent is the only one where we’re told to work,” Father Chris declared.
Thank you for the reminder, Father Chris. I like, no I need, work!
The Pastor’s homily brought me back to a phrase used several years ago by another priest at the end of his Ash Wednesday homily,.
“Have a joyous Lent!”
We’ve begun a forty-day grace-filled season where new habits can be learned. If, that is, we do the work. That’s the goal, discarding the sin-filled habits and learning new ones, right?
How, exactly, do we learn new habits?
Carefully. Reasonably and truthfully examine our sinful habits and attitudes about others and our world that we’re willing to change. If it’s been a long time since we’ve spoken our sins out loud, if Catholic, consider braving rhe confessional for guidance and absolution from a priest.
Convinced your sins are unforgivable? Father Jacques Phillipe replies, “Our sins are a very poor pretext for distancing ourselves from Him, because the more we sin, the more we have a right precisely to approach Him who says: The healthy are not in need of a doctor — the sick are.… Indeed I came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Matthew 9:12-13). If we wait until we are saints to have a regular life of prayer, we could wait a long time.”
There’s a caveat here however. While doing our reflections and examination of conscoince,we must understand that the desire to correct ourselves emanates from grace. Therefore, it’s always gentle, never forceful. In fact, we’re advised to ignore certain feelings of guilt that seem to arise from our conscience.
To preserve our hearts in perfect tranquility, it is still necessary to ignore some interior feelings of remorse which seem to come from God, because they are reproaches that our conscience makes to us regarding true faults, but which come, in effect, from the evil spirit as can be judged by what ensues. If the twinges of conscience serve to make us more humble, if they render us more fervent in the practice of good works, if they do not diminish the trust that one must have in divine mercy, we must accept them with thanksgiving, as favors from heaven. But if they trouble us, if they dishearten us, if they render us lazy, timid, slow to perform our duties, we must believe that these are the suggestions of the enemy and do things in a normal way, not deigning to listen to them.
All of which inspires joy at this holy season, does it not?
Fasting can be onerous.
Aa a Benedictine Oblate, I know and follow Saint Benedict’s command to pray to love fasting.. In the last couple of weeks however, I’ve dreaded upcoming fast days. Or just haven’t the gumption to do anither day of bread and water. But then that email showed up. It contained a most intriguing conversation between the Prior and T.K. Coleman of the weekly podcast, The Minimalists.
Coleman’s remarks served as a wakeup call to the immensely vast array of the physical and spritual benefits of fasting. And include some I’d never before considered. After listening to their conversation, I’ve recommited to The Great Fast.
The Great Fast Morning Offering
Stir up in me O savior the desire by the merits of your fast in the wilderness, the earnest desire and the effective will to choose to fast, and to so repair my many falls, order my bodily appeatites and purify my mind.
Unite me in the present struggle with all the Christian penitents who will pass this day in self-denial. By this holy observence, increase my hunger for the Banquet of the Lamb-below under the sacramental signs and finally above in the vision of your Blessed Face. Amen..
Have mercy on me, God, in accord with your merciful love;
in your abundant compassion blot out my transgressions.
Thoroughly wash away my guilt;
and from my sin cleanse me.
5For I know my transgressions;
my sin is always before me.b
6Against you, you alone have I sinned;
I have done what is evil in your eyes
So that you are just in your word,
and without reproach in your judgment.c
Behold, I was born in guilt,
in sin my mother conceived me.*d
8Behold, you desire true sincerity;
and secretly you teach me wisdom.
….Psalm 51
It’s only day four and I’m astounded at the tangible fruits of this fast I’d dreaded so. I’ve written before about the well-known health benefits, but the strange emptiness is best expressed through the lens of poet..
There’s a hidden sweetness
in the stomach’s emptiness.We are lutes, no more, no less.
If the sound box is stuffed
full of anything, no music.If the brain and the belly
are burning clean with fasting,
every moment a new song
comes out of the fire.The fog clears, and a new
energy makes you run up the
steps in front of you.Be emptier and cry like
reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with
the reed pen.When you’re full of food and drink,
Satan sits where your
spirit should, an ugly metal
statue in place of the Kaaba.When you fast, good habits gather
like friends who want to help.Fasting is Solomon’s ring.
Don’t give it to some illusion
and lose your power.But even if you’ve lost all
will and control, they come
back when you fast,
like soldiers appearing out
of the ground, pennants
flying above them.A table descends to your
tent, Jesus’s table.
Expect to see it, when you
fast, this table spread with
other food better than the
broth of cabbages.
