Padrecita's Ponderings

A Joyful Lent!

One of my favorite movies from the 1980s is Lady Hawk. At one point in the film, the great Australian actor, Leo McKern, playing Father Imperius, voices his dismay when he is told he cannot eat a wounded hawk (who is really Michelle Pfeiffer under an evil enchantment!). “Oh God,” the monk intones, “is it Lent again already?”

While Ash Wednesday is late again this year (February 22nd), it still seems to me that the season of Lent has sneaked up on us. In fact, it always seems that way to me. The temptation is strong for me to moan, with Father Imperius, “Oh God, it is Lent again—time for hunger, gloom and guilt.” Or as our Lord reminds us in our gospel for Ash Wednesday: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting—the three basic acts of the devout Jew.

But is Lent really such a gloomy time? While I would not characterize it as a barrel of laughs, I have found through years of “keeping Lent” what many of you have perhaps discovered—that renewed and concentrated prayer, sensible abstinence, and appropriate self-sacrifice during the six weeks preceding Easter can be an exciting and fruitful opening to a deeper relationship with our crucified and risen Savior.

Take almsgiving, for example—is that just part of our duty to remember the poor, or is it an opportunity to go deeper than that and try to detach from our possessions? In a recent letter, I talked about stewardship as an extension of our gratitude towards God for all God’s gifts to us. This is a good prelude to the kind of joyful giving that is part of the divine nature itself. God gives for the sheer joy of it, and Lent might be a good time to rediscover this and to participate more fully in God’s being.

Lent can be the perfect opportunity, for example, to combine giving with fasting. One woman I know felt that she was spending more money than necessary eating out, so for the season of Lent, she cut herself down to one restaurant meal a week, calculated what she was saving in cash, and put the money aside, waiting for God to tell her where to give it. A woman in the parish showed up in church during Holy Week and confided to my friend that her social security check was late. She had rent money but not enough for food. The money my friend had saved up was just enough to tide the lady over until her check came. Later, the parishioner paid the money back and my friend gave it to the church. She told me later, “That was the best Good Friday I ever had!”

Our Lenten discipline need not be restricted to money or food, however. Time is also a valuable commodity. I know a teenaged girl who gave up her favorite TV show every Lent and used the time to read, pray, or study. This habit carried over into the rest of her year and the rest of her life.

What about our prayer life? Again, Lent is the perfect time to take what our 12-Step friends call “a fearless and searching moral inventory.” In some church traditions, including our own Episcopal one, this can include the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where sins are confessed to another person, lay or ordained, who declares God’s forgiveness to the penitent. There is something about confession to someone else that makes it impossible for us to hide, cover-up, or excuse ourselves. I have always found particular healing in this sacrament. If anyone at St. Christopher’s would like to make your confession this Lent, our Book of Common Prayer includes two services of reconciliation, and I am available to make an appointment with you at any time.

However you choose to handle the penitential part of your Lenten prayer life, the point is to get rid of the barriers and move with new freedom in your relationship with God. Guilt is only useful when it causes us to change and grow. Fasting, almsgiving, and prayer—three powerful preparations for new life in Christ for the Easter people of God! During the season of Lent, we place ourselves at the foot of the Cross in order that we might participate more fully and more joyfully in the Resurrection.

Blessings,
Padrecita Jeanne