By Sister Doreen, SSJD
As C.S. Lewis put it so succinctly, “you are living your life as if you were trying to survive it.” This Lent let’s do more, individually and collectively, than worry about our survival. Let us instead dare to enter into the abundant life that God is always and everywhere inviting us into.
From Ash Wednesday to the Fifth Sunday in Lent we have had a time to renew our life in the paschal mystery, a journey through this holy season remembering our need for repentance, and for the mercy and forgiveness of God. It has been a time of asking God to remove my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh, to create in me a clean heart.
Joan Chittister wrote: “Ash Wednesday, an echo of the Hebrew Testament’s ancient call to sackcloth and ashes, is a continuing cry across the centuries that life is transient, that change is urgent. We don’t have enough time to waste on nothingness. We need to repent our dillydallying on the road to God. We need to regret the time we’ve spent playing with dangerous distractions and empty diversions along the way. We need to repent of our senseless excesses and our excursions into sin, our breaches of justice, our failures of honesty, our estrangement from God, our savouring of excess, our absorbing self-gratifications, our infantile addiction, one creature craving another. We need to get back in touch with our souls.”
The word Lent is derived from an old English word for spring, recognizing that Lent is the time of year when our natural world changes from the somber browns and greys of winter to the bright greens of the new life in spring. Lent is a time of personal preparation. It is the somber time of making our lives right with God again as we prepare for the celebration of Easter. It is an intentional journey into the heart of God, for the purpose of allowing God to journey deep within our own broken hearts, gently bringing us to death in order that we may live again – or as Joan said – get back in touch with our souls.
I share several reflections by others as we move from Lent into Holy Week on the journey with Jesus, friend of my soul, to our joyful resurrection together.
“To Keep A True Lent”
“Is this a fast, to keep the larder lean?
And clean from fat of veals and sheep?
Is it to quit the dish of flesh, yet still to fill
The platter high with fish?
Is it to fast an hour, or ragg’d to go,
Or show a downcast look and sour?
No; ’tis a fast to dole thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat, unto the hungry soul.
It is to fast from strife, from old debate and hate;
To circumcise thy life.
To show a heart grief-rent; To starve thy sin, not bin [trash];
And that’s to keep thy Lent”.
— Robert Herrick (1591–1674)“So Much Wrong”
So much wrong and so much injustice, So, you shouldered a cross.
Now like you my best dreams shattered. All I know is the weight of loss.
My beloved, my beloved, tell me, where can you be found?
You drank deep of the cup of suffering, and your death is our holy ground.Olive trees showed the pain of sorrow. They were grieving for their Lord.
Round Jerusalem the hills were mourning as the city denied its God
My beloved, my beloved, tell me, where can you be found?
You drank deep of the cup of suffering, and your death is our holy ground.No fine song, no impressive music can attempt to relieve my heart;
in this hour I am called to grieving lest no other will play this part.
My beloved, my beloved, tell me, where can you be found?
You drank deep of the cup of suffering, and your death is our holy ground.Everything I could ever offer could not pay for what God has done;
but my life shall be spent in honour of my Saviour, God’s only Son.
My beloved, my beloved, tell me, where can you be found?
You drank deep of the cup of suffering, and your death is our holy ground.— Text: Arabic; English version, John Bell 2005. (#47 Sing a New Creation, Anglican Church of Canada)
“It is in solidarity with this corporate experience that people enter into Lent, Holy Week and Easter observation. In prayer, reading, meditation and solitude, followers of Jesus may practise a measure of interior withdrawal and reflection, in which to look with some honesty at the wilderness places in our hearts and lives, to remember and name our own temptations and failures and to hear again the call to conversion, to turning as the prodigal son did and heading for home. But we do so in the company of others. The great liturgical drama of Passiontide and Easter worship is a vivid reminder of the ‘us’. It locates us firmly in our humanity, inviting us to discover that it is only in the sharing of our human vulnerability and frailty that our potential for resurrection is to be found.”
— Kathy Galloway“The world and time and all created by God are eastering and rising up to life again.
The universe and all of us are the result of unbearable tenderness,
and we are laced and threaded with everlasting life that cannot and will not ever be undone.
Hope surrounds and delight stalks our every step,
because Love still reigns and seeks us out no matter where we hide or live.”
— Megan McKenna
Yes! Yes! “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you” Isaiah 60:1.