Category Archives: Lent

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Isaiah 58.12

Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Years ago–2009, to be precise–I wrote a Lenten devotional as part of my discipline for the season. I reflected on the daily Mass readings and chose a saying of the desert fathers that fit with my reflection. (In terms of the Lectionary, it was Year B(II), like this year.)

Today, I am rushing–meant to be off in less than an hour to drive 5 hours south to my in-laws. So I thought I’d pull up the entry from Saturday after Ash Wednesday, 2009. And that’s all that’s there: a brief quotation from my set text for this Lent: Isaiah 58. There’s no time for reflection now, but I feel certain that my Lent is on track.

Deo gratias.

Friday after Ash Wednesday

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Why am I doing this? Why am I ‘putting pen to paper’, so to speak, this Lent? I am making a concerted effort to write, not only in my journal, but here, on this blog. But why? There are human beings around me, my family in the first instance, who need me. Yet here I am, sitting at the computer.

I think what Dorothy Day says earlier in the preface of sorts (‘Confession’) helps me to see a little of why I am doing this. She observes that writing the story of one’s life ‘is a confession too’. And that is one reason for writing: to admit, every day, that I am not good at this. Not good at all. I’m often tired and resentful, more distractable than usual, and I feel distinctly less-than-holy. The poor in spirit may be blessed, but it isn’t a great place to be, emotionally and psychologically speaking. Trying to do Lent properly makes me painfully aware of how lacking I am in virtue, in the fruits of the Spirit.

The writing is also, Day observes, like giving oneself away, which is what love urges us to do. I’ve never really thought about writing as a form of love, an activity of love. But if she is right that ‘[y]ou write as you are impelled to write’, it is Love, the Spirit of Love, that does the impelling.

But that is all for the morning: there are human beings stirring who need me, or they’ll miss the bus.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

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One day down. Many, many days to go. And yesterday was hard. Not because of Ash Wednesday, though the doing-without didn’t lift my spirits. Things are just generally hard in this season of my life, and I have been struggling. I feel that there ought to be something I can do to change things, or that there was something I should have done the day before yesterday, or last year, or sometime in the 1990s, that would have made yesterday less disappointing and anxiety-ridden.

But I know that’s not how it works. That’s not what the Christian life is about. It’s not about succeeding and being comfortably happy. A fair few years ago I published a book in which I suggested that holiness is in the struggle–it’s not getting to the top that characterizes Christian life, but getting up again after every setback. (If you’ve seen the 1986 film ‘The Mission’, Rodrigo’s epic hill-climb is what I have in mind.)

Not only that, though. Tough going, in the New Testament, tends to mean that you’re on the right track rather than the wrong one. I used Acts 14.22 to show this (if you’re curious, see pp. 225-226), but certainly we would not have to look further than Matthew 7.14: ‘For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.’

Maybe that doesn’t sound like good news in the abstract. Maybe it sounds like bad advice, perhaps, or an encouragement to wait for heavenly joy instead of resisting present suffering. But in a situation where I am wondering what I could have done to avoid this, or what I did to deserve feeling like I do, it is the best news. Because it doesn’t mean I am in the wrong place. (Now, there are all sorts of suffering that we bring on ourselves, like a bad hangover, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.)

I’m not saying the rest of Lent is now going to be easy, or even easier. I just hope that I’ll be able to remember from one day to another that this is the right road, however much I may struggle to take the next step on it.

On the feast of St Joseph

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The solemnity of St Joseph trumps Lent. No purple today; it is not Tuesday of the fourth week of Lent. (In our diocese we observed the solemnity of St Cuthbert, our patron, yesterday.) it is the feast day of St Joseph. His feast day is important enough that it has been translated, as it fell on Lætare Sunday this year.

And it should be given such special attention. ‘When Joseph woke up [from the dream in which the angel of the Lord appeared to him to say that the child in Mary’s womb was conceived by the Holy Spirit] he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do’–that is, to marry her anyway (Matthew 1.20-21, 24).

Joseph copies God–not that Mary had been unfaithful like Israel with the Golden Calf, or like Hosea’s wife, but in appearance. For how many would have believed Joseph at the time? Whom would he tell, anyway? We are never told that he reported the dream to anyone, though it is a safe bet that he told Mary. Perhaps Mary repeated it to Elizabeth. After all, Elizabeth knew that Mary’s baby was no ordinary child.

To the rest, the world outside, how must it have looked? Either Joseph had known his betrothed before their marriage, or someone else had. I don’t imagine that anyone’s first guess would have been conception by the Holy Spirit. Only after the birth of Jesus did the angels spread the news that Isaiah’s prophecy–which the angel had called to Joseph’s mind–had been fulfilled. Only then did the wise ones rejoice to see the promised child.

But Joseph believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Rightly does Bernardino of Siena (Sermon 2, on St Joseph: Opera 7, 16. 27-30) suggest we append St Joseph to the litany of the faithful in Hebrews 11. By faith Joseph took Mary to be his wife, trusting the words of the angel of the Lord that Mary’s child would save his people from their sins.

So it is not surprising that Joseph’s foster-child, after being found in the temple by his anxious parents, ‘went down with them and came to Nazareth and lived under their authority’ (Luke 2.51). Like (foster-)father, like son. Elsewhere in Hebrews, we read that Jesus learned obedience: Jesus, the Incarnate Word of Almighty God, who, as God, owed obedience to no one. Yet he learned obedience from two people whose obedience is celebrated in the Church this week: Joseph and Mary. Today we read that Joseph ‘did what the angel of the Lord told him to do’; on Saturday we celebrate the moment Joesph’s betrothed said to the angel: ‘Let it be to me according to your word’ (Luke 1.38).

Mary and Joseph trusted what God’s messengers said to them, and they are our spiritual parents as we have been incorporated into Christ. So we should, as members of the Son they nurtured, honour them as the commandment teaches: ‘Honour thy mother and father.’ Rightly do we celebrate them, righty do these two solemnities interrupt our penance during Lent. The solemnities of St Joseph and of the Annunciation point to the great feast of the Nativity, in which we celebrate the birth of the One born to save his people from their sins by his obedience, even unto death on a cross.

The intermingling of sorrow and joy is the pattern of Christian life. We are pulled from the gloom represented by the purple cloth in the midst of Lent, and we mourn on the solemnities of the martyrs–St Stephen and the Holy Innocents at Christmas and St Mark, St Philip and St James at Easter–during times of celebration. This pattern reminds us that we are living in the time between the dawn of salvation and its consummation. And so we wait in gloom but not in despair; we wait in joyful expectation even as we do penance, for the One who has died is risen, and will come again in glory.

St Joseph, pray for us!

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

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Quis ascendet in montem Domini / aut quis stabit in loco sancto suo? Innocens manibus et mundo corde / qui non levavit ad vana animam suam, nec iuravit in dolum. Ps 23 [24]: 3-4

Notam fac mihi viam, in qua ambulam/ quia ad te levavi animam meam. Ps 142 [143]: 8

The translation of ‘levavit ad vana animam suam’ I usually read renders it, ‘desires not worthless things’. So I have always thought of this quality—of the one who does not desire them—as a kind of non-distraction by useless stuff: trinkets, frippery, junk. But Psalm 142 puts it in a different light. ‘Ad te [Domini] levavi animam meam’: ‘to you [Lord] I lift up my soul’. If the soul is meant (as of course it is) to be ‘lifted up’ to God, then ‘levavit ad vana animam suam’—[having] lifted up the soul to worthless things—is nothing short of idolatry. It is not simply distraction by shiny trinkets but displacing the proper object of the soul’s desire: God. Then these are not just any worthless things. Whether or not the things mentioned are idols crafted of wood or stone, once the soul has been lifted up to them, they become idols. For that is what idolatry is: putting something else in the place of God. Compared to God, anything we desire is vain, useless. That is, nothing we desire will satisfy our soul. So the psalmist longs for God like a person in a desert yearns for water. Only God can quench that thirst. So the psalmist calls on God when his heart is numb within him. Only God saves all those who are crushed in spirit. To expect things—any things—to heal a broken heart or satisfy a thirsty soul is to try to fill a cracked jar with water: vain.

Idolatry is not a sin because God gets angry at being replaced, as if we are thereby depriving God of some necessary accolades. Idolatry is a sin because it stops us calling on God in the day of trouble, which is our only hope of rescue. And it isn’t only things that appear worthless that can be idols, of course. The most pious-seeming sacrifices can become idols if they are not offered up to God with a humble and grateful heart. All the burnt offerings continually before God (in Psalm 49 [50]) are worthless compared to ‘a sacrifice of thanksgiving’. God does not need the things we offer up. God lacks nothing: ‘if I were hungry, I would not tell you’ (Psalm 49[50]. 12). No: what God asks is this: ‘Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me’ (v. 15).

All the practices of abstinence, fasting and almsgiving, prayer and penance, can become idols if we do them out of a desire for anything but God. The lack of food on days of fasting is a tiny taste of the ‘day of trouble’—a self-induced lack to train the soul for the real thing: a hunger we have not chosen and cannot satisfy; an emptiness not of our own making.

How will my soul know what to do in the day of trouble? Practice, practice, practice: ad te levavi animam meam, ad te levavi animam meam. In all the small wants that irk me during Lent, let me lift up my soul to the One who alone can satisfy.

Deo gratias.

What I always do for Lent

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It’s not really a ‘giving up’ sort of thing, but it has become essential to my Lenten practice over the last several years. Don’t laugh: it’s my choice of earrings. I wear purple or black earrings during Lent. Occasionally I allow myself plain silver ones. Very occasionally.

This may sound like a very small thing, but it has a significant effect. Because I do wear earrings every day (I know not everyone does), I remind myself every morning as I am getting ready that it is Lent. I don’t always to have a list of things I am giving up, but just being aware every day that it’s a penitential season makes a difference.

For example, let’s say I’m having a mid-morning coffee and think about a sweet snack to accompany it. Then I remember it’s Lent. I just have the coffee. Five o’clock rolls around, and a cocktail or a glass of wine might be nice. It’s been a tough day (aren’t they all, these lockdown days?). I remember it’s Lent. Maybe I’ll have some herbal tea instead.

I suppose that restricting my earring choice is like putting on the shield of self-denial, as this morning’s collect at Lauds says. Of course, I don’t practice perfect penitence just because I’m wearing purple earrings. But it does help me to stick to whatever other practice I’ve decided to adopt for Lent. That’s going to be especially helpful this year, as the main thing I am trying to give up is getting angry. (Pray for me, please!)

And, of course, wearing somber earrings for several weeks makes me that much happier to don my favourite pearls when Easter comes.

Why I’m giving up chocolate for Lent

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I was inspired, ironically, by a post listing 19 things to give up for Lent that aren’t chocolate. unknown-2The list includes fear, envy, doubt, pride and worry. Now, I would love to give up worrying, and not just for Lent. These nineteen habits of the heart (which is what they mainly are) should be the target of our asceticism; that is, whatever it is we give up for Lent, it ought to be with a view to strengthening ourselves for the daily struggle against the attitudes that lead us into sin and away from God.

Don’t get me wrong: I love to do a Big Thing for Lent. One year I wrote a devotional, reflecting each day on the Mass readings and pairing them with a saying from the desert fathers and mothers. Another year, I tried to give up losing my temper with the children, with some success. And once I tried to work out deep-seated resentment and unforgiveness, taking Lent as a time for a kind of spring-cleaning of the soul. That wasn’t my most successful Lent ever.

What I have found, actually, especially thanks to a helpful priest and the book he recommended, Spiritual Combat Revisited, is that the opportunities for small acts of self-denial are ever-present, and usually sufficient to my needs for ascetic exercise. Letting go of impatience as I wait in a long line at the supermarket, for example; or resisting the impulse to snap at one of the children, as s/he does that thing for the seventeenth time, having been told sixteen times to stop, please. There is no shortage in my life of opportunities to put another’s needs before my own. unknown-3

So why give up anything at all? One might say (and not unjustifiably) that the Church offers an ascetic programme of sorts for Lent: days of fasting and abstinence, extended hours for confession (and an obligation to go), and the liturgical fast from the Gloria and from all alleluias. Isn’t that sufficient? Perhaps. Giving up something more is a way of taking Lent to heart, of keeping the season in mind more consistently. I put more effort in, and my observance of the season deepens.

Chocolate does seem like the most boring possible thing to give up for Lent. I mean, couldn’t I find something more inventive, something more impressive? Everyone gives up chocolate for Lent. But does that make it any less effective for me? I think not. Remember Naaman, who suffered from leprosy? Elisha sent him to wash seven times in the Jordan, and Naaman had a tantrum. He expected something different, something more fitting for a person of his rank and distinction, perhaps. Luckily, one of Naaman’s servants kept his head, and suggested that ‘if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?’ Well, then, why not do this small thing. And Naaman does, and is healed.
Giving up something for Lent is like that: it isn’t about thinking up something cool to take on, or something huge to give up. It’s about humility. As Christ humbled himself and suffered for us–in both very cruel and very ordinary ways–so we take this opportunity to grow in humility and expose ourselves to suffering. So I am giving up chocolate for Lent, as are a number of other people in the parish. I admit that this is enough for me; I hope that it will keep me mindful of other small opportunities for self-denial in my daily life, during Lent and all the days that follow.

With angels and archangels

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This Lent, I am writing a series on the Sanctus for my parish newsletter. Although I do sometimes wonder whether anyone reads the back of the bulletin, a few people have been kind enough to remark on the short pieces. (I did a series on the creed in the autumn.) Here is the first installment (printed for the first Sunday in Lent):

During Lent, we direct our attention to the holiness of God more than at any other time of year. Not only that: we strive to imitate that holiness. One of the ways the Church has called the holiness of God to our minds comes from the sixth chapter of Isaiah: the prophet sees the seraphim, who call out to one another: ‘holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’

The acclamation has been a part of the Church’s liturgy since the early part of the fifth century, though it was probably in use from even earlier times. (The ‘Benedictus qui venit…’ was attached to the acclamation very early, and in future weeks we will look more closely at it.) For example, St Augustine would recognize the Latin text we sing, although the traditional Gregorian plainchant would not have been familiar to him. (What we rightly consider ancient—dating from the 8th century and widespread by the 11th—had not yet been developed in Augustine’s day!)

It is not just the antiquity of the text that ought to inspire us, however. The inclusion of the Sanctus in the Roman canon in the 5th century brought in the idea ‘that by joining the angels in their song we participate in the heavenly liturgy’ (Enrico Mazza, The Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Rite, p. 48).  And this provides an important clue to the means by which we imitate the Lord’s holiness; by participation. All our Lenten practices—prayer and giving, and giving up—do not work magic on their own. Rather, by them we join ourselves to the Lord’s suffering. It is his passion and death that worked for our salvation, and in his resurrection that we are raised to new life. So in all that we do this Lent, our aim is to make more space for our Lord, so that we can say with the apostle Paul, ‘it is no longer I who live, but he who lives in me.’ When we attend to the presence of God among us and in us, and we participate in him as he dwells in us, holiness will be ours as well.

 

Being human, part 3: the spiritual life

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the spiritual life lately. Not, of course, that it’s ever too far from my mind. As a teacher of those preparing for ordained ministry, I always considered the pastoral and spiritual implications of the theology and ethics I taught. And as a person of faith, I have found the spiritual life an integrative force in my life, which often seems like a patchwork of roles and responsibilities and hopes and disappointments. Woven through the various scraps of fabric, there is this sense of purpose that draws in everything–yes, everything–and orients it toward a bigger-than-I reality.

Although my recent thinking about spirituality has been inspired by the situation of women in colleges and universities and the challenges facing them, I’ve been struck deeply by the universality of our need for spiritual well-being. An article by David Morstad, over at The Larger Table, points out that people with significant intellectual disabilities have as great a desire and need for spiritual nourishment and community–if not greater–than those with greater cognitive abilities.

A sense of spirituality–which might be as simple as the notion that there is a reality bigger than we are, that holds us and draws us forward–seems fairly standard and unobjectionable. The category of folks who consider themselves ‘spiritual, but not religious’ attests, I think, to this foundational place of spirituality in our lives. But that isn’t to say that ‘spirituality’ is somehow what religion is really about, or that the practice of any sort of religion or spirituality is the same.

What our various approaches to religion and the spiritual life should teach us, I believe, is not that religions are all the same, or even that ‘religion’ is a thing that means the same thing to people who practice different religions. Rather, our continuing openness to faith and spirituality, and the persistence of faith-based values within our society, ought to remind us that, however much divides us, there is much that we nonetheless share. Being human involves forming a view (insofar as our capacities allow us to do so) about what it is to be human, and this is a task that involves a great many of us in spiritual reflection in addition to philosophical and scientific study.

As Lent begins, Christians around the world pay renewed attention to the life of the spirit.  I hope that this Lent will be a time when the universality of our need for grace also awakens in me a deeper awareness of the unity of the human family. After all, Jesus’s prayer for us as he entered into his suffering was that we might all be one. May it be so.

Deo gratias.

 

Monday in Holy Week

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He does not break the crushed reed,
nor quench the wavering flame.
                               -Isaiah 42
*           *        *
I am glad that something has gone haywire with my email account, at least for the moment. Because the email from Universalis with the daily Mass readings hasn’t arrived, I visited the site for Lauds and the Mass readings. A few lines into the Benedictus, I thought, this is a strange translation of the Benedictus. And then I remembered why I like this “strange” translation so much:
Through the bottomless mercy of our God,
  one born on high will visit us
to give light to those who walk in darkness,
  who live in the shadow of death;
  to lead our feet in the path of peace.
The heart of our salvation is this, “the bottomless mercy of our God,” whose coming among us we remember in a distinct way this week. God chose this bizarre way to save us, this way that seems so foolish and un-God-like. Gregory of Nyssa contended with those who thought the Incarnation and the Passion were wholly unworthy of God. But it shows God’s infinite mercy spectacularly. It is that “bottomless mercy” that inspires the way of the Lord’s coming to “visit us.”
“He does not break the crushed reed/nor quench the wavering flame.” Indeed not. Instead, God opts to be crushed, though Isaiah insists that “he will neither waver nor be crushed until true justice is established on the earth.” So the One who cannot be crushed is crushed (Isaiah 53), and so true justice is established on the earth; and we are not crushed, but saved. 
And so all of our Lenten practice comes down to this, this week, in which we remember that all our endeavors to join the Lord in his suffering serve not to crush us, but to prepare us to receive him once again in his mercy–bottomless mercy!–at Easter. 
 Deo gratias.