Depending on the situation, the word “discipline” can either be interpreted positively or negatively. It takes discipline to master a sport, play a Beethoven piano sonata, or drive a car safely. I remember first learning the organ in college and laboring rather tediously through technical exercises. I wasn’t allowed to play the pedals for months, but I persevered. I knew, somehow, that this hard work would pay off. It did. When I finally moved on to rigorous repertoire, not only could I play the notes with ease, but I could make real music. The discipline of practice, which previously might have seemed restrictive, was now the means by which I could add rubato and other musical gestures.
But, apply the word discipline to the spiritual life, and most people nervously cough or say that discipline gets in the way of their prayer and relationship with God. If only they could be free to pray as they wish and choose what and what not to take on, their lives would be spiritually better. Without wholly dismissing the flexibility necessary for the spiritual life, we should be wary of eschewing talk about spiritual discipline.
Lent is certainly an appropriate season to explore anew the meaning of spiritual discipline. The Book of Common Prayer, in a little known (or conveniently ignored?) instruction, says that Ash Wednesday, the weekdays of Lent and Holy Week (except for the Feast of the Annunciation), Good Friday, and all other Fridays of the year (except in Christmastide and Eastertide) are days “observed by special acts of discipline and self-denial” (p. 17). In Lent, some of you may be accustomed to avoiding flesh meat on Fridays. We pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays to walk the way of suffering and death with Jesus. But what does “discipline” and “self-denial” mean more broadly?
Above all, I think it means that the intentionality, focus, and time that we give to many aspects of our lives outside the Church also belong within the Church. Why is that so often not the case? It takes discipline to pray at set times during the day, especially when we are busy and don’t feel like doing “one more thing.” It takes discipline to rouse the children from bed on a Sunday morning to go to church. Temporarily, perhaps it’s a chore, but long-term, it’s a vital planting of seeds of faith that will hopefully bloom in the lives of those children down the road. It takes discipline to carve out time for God in our lives that are, frankly, overstuffed by too many demands on our attention.
Discipline, if uncomfortable at first, can bring great joy, and it always brings great freedom. It brings the freedom of knowing the only love that matters—the love of Christ Jesus. It brings the freedom of forgiveness from self-hatred, contempt for others, and our sins. It brings the freedom of knowing, more than anything else, that God does not love us based on what we accomplish but simply for who we are. We don’t need to be overachievers to win God’s love. We simply need to be ourselves, ready to acknowledge our frailty, to repent, and finally, to accept God’s gift of mercy and forgiveness.
How will this season of Lent be a time of renewed commitment to discipline? How might you benefit from such a commitment? How might you be changed? And how might this discipline be not “one more thing” to do, but an embrace of the truth of the love that sets us all free?
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle