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| TEACH YOUR CHILDREN TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF GOD |
- LENT 2008 - ASH WEDNESDAY
“What are you going to do for Lent?” It’s a question often asked today with a slightly scoffing tone.
The idea of ‘spiritual exercises’ or asceticism has become so caught up with associations of
negative religion, self-rejection or self-righteousness. Yet the question is often asked – it connects to
a deeply felt need to be actively developing in your spiritual journey – and so, for us all but especially
among people with a conscious spiritual practice, it is an important question.
Many religions have such periods of intensified ascetical practice – Ramadan, the Buddhist Rains
retreat or the Hindu Thai Pusam, for example. For Christians Lent, mirroring the forty days Jesus
spent in the desert before the beginning of his public teaching, offers this opportunity for renewal and
a recharging of one’s commitment and devotion to the Way. Lent is the annual season in which the
Church undertakes spiritual exercises whose focal point globally is Christ and, locally, personally, the
human longing for healing and salvation, wholeness and sanctification. As it synchronises with the
Easter celebration, it is also an experiential reflection on the way this human longing is radically
realised through the mortality of Jesus. Fittingly, then, Lent involves the physical aspects of our
spiritual process. (We should feel both physically and psychologically better because of a well-
practiced Lent).
But this is just why it is so hard for many modern people to understand Lent and why they dismiss it
only as ‘giving up’ pleasures that often seem pretty harmless or childish. We need a liturgical and
sacramental perception of things to make sense of this. Liturgy, public worship, lifts the individual up
from the atomised state into a community. So, it is true, can a football match, a carnevale in Rio or a
rock concert - to some degree. A liturgy goes further than these experiences of togetherness by
deepening the meaning of the community it realises – ultimately not that of a team, tribe or party, but
of all humanity – and also of the happy integration of body and mind that good liturgy acknowledges
and promotes. Liturgy is about physical presence. It cannot be done satisfactorily by proxy or
virtually. This in the end is what ‘going to church on Sunday’ is about too. But liturgy is much more
than that.
The liturgical cycle of the year used to be fully integrated into the social and political calendars. There
was only one calendar for all – this had its dangers and pitfalls, too, of course –whereas today we
have several parallel calendars reflecting our multiple and often competing identities. If we have a
liturgical calendar in our life at all it is usually a subordinate one – work or entertainment usually have
greater weight. Even though we have gained some personal freedom by being disconnected from the
liturgical seasons of the Church we have also lost a great deal. For many today life is a grey flatland
over which the artificial stimuli and distractions of entertainment or excessive workloads pass like
indifferent weather patterns. By contrast, a liturgical sense of time weaves a sacred story – for
Christians a historical narrative – into our daily and seasonal lives. As the moveable feast of Easter
reflects, based as it is on the phases of the moon, this can also remind us that, despite the artificial
environment we have created, we also inhabit a natural world that sings in our blood and limbic
systems.
In Lent we not only remember Jesus going into the desert to be tempted. We understand that we too
have a personal desert to enter, one in which we learn to wrestle with those forces of darkness that
anyone interested in enlightenment has to face. The old language of wrestling with Satan or spiritual
warfare needs to be paraphrased today but it should not be too quickly dismissed because it touches
real aspects of our personal growth and healing. The teachers of the past expressed it by saying that
we ‘build up our defences’ against the powers of darkness through the spiritual exercises
undertaken in Lent. We become stronger in dealing with the problems and barriers we encounter
both within ourselves and in the unexpected events of our lives.
So a good preparation for understanding Lent, after reading Isaiah 58, is to read the gospel accounts
of Christ’s temptation in the desert – Mt 4:1-11, Mk 1:12-15 and Lk 4:1-13. These different accounts
reflect a variety of possible interpretations and would make good lectio material between today and
the first Sunday of Lent in four days’ time. What is Jesus being tempted by? What is the basis of his
rejection of these falsehoods and illusions? Why does he emerge from the desert after his baptism,
ready to begin his mission?
A liturgical perception of time weaves our individual histories into something bigger. It expands our
horizons while challenging the petty imperialism and territorialism of the ego. Once it has begun to
form part of our feeling about the meaning of time it opens up a sacramental vision as well. This also
is intricately linked to our human integrality – body and mind. To see things sacramentally is to see
the sacred value of the physical and of the very mundane. It is to know that ‘the world is charged with
the grandeur of God’. It allows us to taste and enjoy the beauty and wonder of things without
destroying our appreciation of them with compulsive analysis or reductionism. Especially at this time
of the year in the northern hemisphere we can read the picture book of nature with a special thrill. In
Spring we see the wonder of new life pushing up through the dead leaves. We see tiny flowers of
cosmic beauty proving stronger than the frozen ground. The self-giving nature of all life and of the
Word of God finds a supreme metaphor in the beauty of the season. Like all beauty the best way to
enjoy and respect it and to feel united with its epiphany is to leave it alone.
- They seek me day by day and love to know my ways. (Is 58)
In the southern hemisphere, unknown to the biblical poets, the seasonal metaphors for Lent and
Easter add further dimension to their meanings for us today. Today when it easy for us to inhabit all
seasons almost simultaneously, sharing these sacramental symbols enriches the sense of the
wonder at our terrestrial home as well as of our fragile yet profoundly unified human existence on it.
Lent is a time when we refine and purify the spiritual senses and identify the habits or patterns that
pollute them. The means of doing this are the exercises we undertake in this season. It is not a time
for self-punishment or repression. Today especially the human psyche is too fragile for that. But
when a friend summons up the courage to tell you something you would rather not hear, some
exposure of a fault or dishonesty you have been guilty of, do you not (in the end) feel gratitude for their
expression of love and concern for you? It is not condemnation but ‘repentance’ that works to
accelerate the spiritual journey. To repent means not to feel guilty which is a waste of time and spirit.
It means to be honest, clear-sighted and courageous enough to change direction.
Before changing direction it is best to pause. Lent is time above all to give more time than we
normally think we can afford to the mechanics of our spiritual life. It is not only about giving up but
doing something more. Sometimes the two can be nicely balanced – less time watching television,
more time reading, going earlier to bed, getting up earlier to meditate, listening to the news just once
a day, praying the hours more often, eating less and better, living and communicating more healthily.
Of course, good intentions are more likely to be sustained when they are realistic. It is better to slow
down gradually before changing direction or you may simply go into a spin. The aim of Lenten
disciplines are to reverse the momentum of actual or implicit self-rejection and to allow the
experience of knowing that we are loved to arise and envelop us. This knowledge (however it comes
to us) is in fact the ‘knowledge of God’. The changing of momentum is stillness. Thus,
- Be still and know that I AM GOD (Ps.46)
Finally, or it will take you till Easter to read this, the union of the liturgical and sacramental sensibility
is achieved through a variety of ways differently suitable to the temperament and level of
development we possess. There is a lot to choose from – the reading of scripture, participation in the
sacraments, other ways of prayer, fasting. The principle of all ‘self-denial’ serving a positive end is
moderation. But sometimes a period of abstinence is the best way to restore balance. Is there
something you do to excess? Focus on that and see if ‘giving it up’ for Lent would help restore a
moderated (and therefore enhanced) enjoyment. Are you aware of something you would like to do
regularly and never seem to make enough time for? Call that to mind and see if you really want to
make time for it. And don’t forget the other skilful means that the Christian tradition has always
emphasised. Like almsgiving, which is the giving (and letting go) of time or money to those in greater
need than you. This is especially useful in an age of consumerism and material anxiety. It is an
opportunity to practice real giving – anonymously, modestly and without asking anything in return,
even a good conscience.
Or, like “good works”, an active exertion of yourself towards the undoing of an injustice. It took
Christians nearly two millennia to realise that slavery did not fit with gospel values. This Lent, you
might not be able to bring peace to the Middle East or reverse global warming. But you can help; and
doing so might enlighten you to a responsibility closer to home, in the family, your community or
workplace.
- Rather, is not this the fast I require: to loose the fetters of injustice, to untie the knots of the yoke
and set free those who are oppressed, tearing off every yoke? Is it not sharing your food with the
hungry, taking the homeless poor into your homes, clothing the naked when you meet them and
never evading a duty to your kinsfolk? (Is 58)
John Main thought that prayer is the essence of all Christian asceticism, the turning from self to the
Other. This implies a certain depth of prayer, a depth of simplicity and purity such as the mantra can
lead us to. So perhaps for a meditator the first Lenten practice we should joyfully undertake - and
Lent should be an increasingly happy time - would be to prepare better for the times of meditation, to
be more faithful to them and to say the mantra with the greatest possible attention, fidelity and
gentleness. Then more than ever,
- The Lord will be your guide continually and will satisfy your needs in the bare desert; he will give
you strength of limb; you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail..
then you will find your joy in the Lord, and I shall make you ride on the heights of the earth (Is 58).
With much love in the journey we share these coming days,
- Laurence Freeman
| Father Laurence´s Special Messages 2008 |