In just a few days’ time, we will enter into the season of Lent. Before I write anything more, I want to name something that you might be experiencing but that you might also prefer to keep secret. I wonder if you’re not looking forward to Lent. Are you even scared of this season of the Church year? Dare I ask whether you wish you could skip right over Lent and move directly to Easter? If you’re having such feelings, please don’t despair. There may be a very good reason why you’re dreading Lent, if that’s indeed the case. (If not, please keep reading nevertheless!) If you aren’t looking forward to Lent, then it could be because we in the Church haven’t done a very good job of talking about Lent and of embracing its true meaning. Throughout so many years of Lenten observance have we confused the means with the end?
I fear that we don’t talk enough about the end, and in fact, we talk far too much about the means without ever referencing the end. What do I mean by this? If you were to read the “Invitation to a Holy Lent” from our Book of Common Prayer, you would learn that the season of Lent originated as a time of preparation for the observance “with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection” (p. 264). If we read these words carefully, it will be clear that everything is centered around the paschal mystery of Christ’s dying and rising again. This mystery is so profound that, at some point, early Christians realized they needed a great deal of time to prepare for it. And so, Lent became such a time of holy preparation.
The Invitation to a Holy Lent tells us that Lent became a season of penitence and fasting. I suspect that we know this all too well. Penitence and fasting have become unpopular in our own day. They aren’t “fun.” But again, if we don’t much care for Lent because we don’t much care for penitence and fasting, then we have again confused the means with the end. In other words, penitence and fasting (along with other Lenten spiritual practices) are not ends in themselves. They are ways in which we learn to celebrate with greater joy the paschal mystery.
Let me offer an example. Each year, I make a spiritual retreat, usually to an Episcopal monastery. When I go there, I prepare to simplify my life for a few days. I know that I will eat less, live more simply, spend less time on my phone, talk less, and spend much more time in prayer. My time on retreat is nothing more than a time of greater intentionality as I seek to know Christ more deeply. I know that in the busyness of life, I will have too much of a good thing, so to speak, and furthermore, I will begin to become complacent about how good a thing life can be. Those things of which I do less on retreat (eating, living, being on my phone) aren’t necessarily bad things, but when my time spent on them becomes too heavily weighted, then I must actively seek out time in which to recalibrate my life. And so, after retreat, I enjoy eating more because I’ve eaten less and been more mindful of what I eat. I enjoy prayer more because I have slowed down in prayer while on retreat. I take greater care with my words because I have talked less. Perhaps now, the point of Lent is becoming clearer to you.
One way of looking at Lent is to see it as a season of intentionality. This certainly might involve giving some things up, such as flesh meat on Fridays or sweets or even some food on days of fasting. But the means is not the end. The means is a way of relishing more in the end. But what is the end?
Again, I turn to the Invitation to a Holy Lent in our prayer book. Hidden in this Invitation is a kernel of good news, which I believe is the end to which Lent is directed. The Invitation notes that during Lent “converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism.” Also, during Lent “those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church” (p. 265). And here’s the clencher: “Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior” (p. 265).
The end of Lent is knowing ever more clearly that each of us is loved, forgiven, and freed by God. This is what’s at the heart of pardon and absolution. The thrust of the paschal mystery is that in Christ’s own death and resurrection, all of creation is set free by God. Sin, while still present, has lost some of its power. Death, while still real, has lost its sting. To embrace Lent with intentionality is to seek to grasp with greater thankfulness the forgiveness and freedom we find in Christ. But if we live with unbounded freedom and utter abandon every day of our lives, we may forget just how beautiful true freedom really is. In Lent, we have an opportunity to discipline ourselves so that we can find true freedom in God.
And all this means, of course, that we must talk about sin. We can’t avoid it. But unfortunately, there are many Christians who have equated talking about sin with the end. The end, it would seem based on such careless speech, is to wallow in our sinfulness. The end is to feel utterly unworthy to be in God’s presence, as if we’re no more than dung upon the earth. While the Reformed heritage of Anglicanism rightly recalls God’s sovereignty, our Catholic heritage must remind us that God created everything good and calls us into loving relationship with him. Even more strongly put, God invites us into the divine life, to share in the divinity of the One who humbled himself to share in our humanity, as one of our prayer book collects so beautifully expresses it. So, what if we described Lent in this way: Lent is a beautiful, treasured time of intentionality in which God invites us to acknowledge and repent of our sin so that we can see in the fullest possible light his infinite, astounding love for us. Sin is simply everything—our willfulness, stubbornness, and bad choices, for example—that prevents us from embracing God’s desire that we might have abundant life.
I wonder if reframing Lent in this way might make it seem more enjoyable to you. And so, I invite you into a holy Lent. As we enter into Lent, I want to be specific about some ways in which it would especially behoove us to relish Lent this year. It goes without saying that we are living in a chaotic, deeply divided time in the life of our nation and in the world. We will be tempted on many occasions to become at odds with one another, in particular because of the ways in which we might disagree with one another. Daily, we are lured into despair. We might be duped into hostile camps, silencing conversation and hurling accusations at one another. But when this ugliness rears its head, remember that Lent is about being reconciled to God and one another. That’s the essence of the paschal mystery. In Christ, we find reconciliation. This Lent, would you make it your prayer to live towards reconciliation rather than pettiness or divisiveness? Lent is also a time for living more deeply into our baptismal vows, and this means that to live intentionally during Lent, we must allow every moment of our lives to be suffused with an awareness of our interconnectedness with one another. All of our actions, all of our speech—however much we may want to separate them from our “religious” lives—affect the well-being of our neighbors. We can’t work out our salvation on our own terms. We are bound together in a common life. Here again is what it means to live towards reconciliation.
In the midst of your busy lives, the Church calls you to set aside time on Ash Wednesday, March 5, to come to church. Mark the intentional observance of this season of Lent with Mass and the imposition of ashes. I invite you to do one other thing this Lent: make the observance of the Lord’s Day the center of your lives for this season. In the Mass, we are most fully accountable to God and one another. In the Mass, we get the clearest sense of our potential to be reconciled to God and one another.
This Lent is particularly special at Good Shepherd. We’re journeying with three adults as they prepare for Holy Baptism at the Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter on April 19. Hassan Baloochiyan, Melika Balouchiyan, and Emma Simpson will be welcomed into the household of God at Easter. They are already a part of our family, but officially on April 19, they will be our beloved brother and sisters in Christ. Please join me in praying for them during this Lenten season. I hope you will be with us in person on April 19 at 8 p.m. to welcome them into the Church.
I pray that this Lent will be a blessing to you and that our collective Lenten observance will sustain us with hope in trying times. I pray that, above all, whatever spiritual practices you take on this Lent will keep your eye on the end, where we’re invited to leave our sinful and unrepentant ways behind and walk with one another into the outstretched arms of God, who offers us endless love, mercy, and forgiveness.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle