As we pass the midpoint of the Lenten season, it would be wise to take a self-assessment. How am I doing with the commitments made this season? Have I made time for prayer, fasting and almsgiving? Perhaps you have added something new to the spiritual playbook for Lent instead of leaving something else out. Regardless of your Lenten goals, we have one thing in common … to draw closer to God. We are preparing to celebrate the Easter miracle of our faith, and so we “rend our hearts, not our garments” as the Prophet Joel implores us. At this waypoint, we reflect on a saving hope that requires courage to go forward, a new future and a bridge across our divided hearts.
Going forward
The Lenten journey of interior mortification can also be a guide for the longer journey of our Christian faith. We know that Lent begins and ends, to be celebrated with the promise of eternal life. This journey follows Jesus through trials to overcome temptation, pain, death and resurrection. Choosing to follow Jesus is the call of the Christian, yet for the time, we remain in between the beginning and the end. This “in between” can be at some times joyous and at other times terrifying. Our path forward can be clear and purpose filled or cloudy and doubt ridden. It is here in the present, “in between,” where we must find the courage to go forward.
St. Titus Brandsma, a Carmelite friar and martyr, once said, “Do not yield to hatred. We are here in a dark tunnel, but we have to go on. At the end, an eternal light is shining for us.” His encouragement was to fellow inmates at the Dachau concentration camp. In the darkest of “in between,” Titus’ strength was not his own but the One who is always, already, there.
New future
We pray, we fast, we give … the Lenten rituals that are for our own personal growth. We hope that martyrdom will not be required to reach holiness, yet some face that reality even today. For the rest of us, we seek a better future. Perhaps this new future is for your family as you hope that their financial struggles are lighter than your own. A future that is filled with purpose is the dream of so many faced with loneliness and depression. Many, blessed with smooth waters, find a future of generosity with your time and resources. Regardless of where we begin, our future in many ways remains unwritten. We can all overcome struggle, find purpose and pay it forward. Lent is a season to remind us of the opportunity before us to be reborn. Just as we follow Jesus through the trials, we can also follow Christ into eternal life. That is the ultimate expression of a “new future,” and one that we can glimpse each time we receive the sacraments of our faith.
Bridging the divide
Emboldened with the courage to go forward and knowing that a new future is still being written for us, how then can we bridge the divide here in the “in between?” One of my favorite spiritual writers of the 20th century is Thomas Merton. A Trappist monk, author, peacemaker and challenging thinker, he embraced the gift of our humanity in all its messiness. During the famous Fourth and Walnut spiritual encounter he had in Louisville, he expressed something that I believe can help us bridge the divide. Merton said, “Thank God! I am only another member of the human race, like all the rest of them … and if only everybody could realize this! … that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” We are all loved beyond compare by our Creator, God who made us to be in relationship with Him … and with each other. Finding connection with each other is a way to begin bridging the divides of our heart.
Regardless of your Lenten goals, we have one thing in common … to draw closer to God. We have a saving hope in that which cannot be explained, only believed. During Lent, we are admonished to “rend our hearts, not our garments,” and return to God with our whole hearts! At this waypoint on the journey, we look for courage to go forward through the dark tunnels of life. We have the promise of a new future, filled with purpose and light. The journey of Lent gives us a brief opportunity to reflect on the divide, the “in between” of it all, and to commit to being better together as the children of God.
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