The observances of Lent can elicit a range of emotions. Our commitments to more prayer, fasting and almsgiving can feel heavy as the season progresses.
Why did I commit to giving up “_____” this year, as it calls to me from across the dinner table with friends? Have I kept up with that extra prayer hour, as the halfway point of the season brings a crisis of confidence? Maybe I need to hang onto the extra $20 in my wallet so that I can afford the crazy price of eggs these days!
Regardless, of your emotional state … breathe … it will be OK. Lent may be about sacrifice, but it is also very much a season of hope. Our Jubilee Year would not be complete without a courageous “purgation through hope.”
Challenging our memory
Each year during Lent, I select a book or article for reflection. In preparation for a talk later in March, I am re-reading Edith Stein’s The Science of the Cross. Edith Stein, or St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was a philosopher, Jewish convert to Catholicism and Carmelite nun. She was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1942, leaving the manuscript nearly complete in her cell except for the conclusion.
The book is a study of St. John of the Cross’ spiritual dark night and offers profound insights into Christ’s sacrifice for our sins. In one chapter, “Purgation through Hope,” Stein speaks about memory, or what I would call lived experience, as the thing that often gets in the way of our spiritual growth. We … or at least me … often measure our confidence and commitment based on what we have done in the past. Our experience operates as a checkpoint against our aspirations. Stein says to let it go … all of it … because we cannot possibly experience God through any effort of our own.
Checking baggage
The commitments we make during Lent to pray, fast and give to the poor are often noble affections for God. We prepare for the Easter miracle, just as Jesus did, in the desert of self-denial.
More time for prayer often means we give up another activity in our lives. Less consumption means we tame our appetites. More almsgiving removes the walls of indifference that may have hardened our hearts.
In effect, we are checking spiritual baggage … yes, we all have baggage. Our baggage is like a running commentary on the successes and failures of life. If I had only done this or that, or last time I did that it did not go well. These negative experiences hold us back from experiencing the “what if” of a grace-filled season.
Not all baggage is negative, though. Some can be filled with joyful experiences. We celebrate the times in our life when blessings abound or grace was palpable. These good experiences are worth celebrating, but we must not let these high points define our limits of spiritual growth as if God had nothing more to offer us. Lent is a time to check the baggage, all of it.
Making space for God
In the Carmelite tradition, there is a phrase that speaks to the ongoing effort to check our baggage and make space for God. Vacare Deo … this phrase from Latin can be translated several ways. Make space for God, openness to God, or my favorite is waste time with God. This can be done through quiet prayer, replacing a meal with a Holy Hour or having a conversation with a neighbor who is lonely.
We can simply be prepared to receive the grace of a relationship, and in return gain the courage to hope. If we have courage to hope in that which is beyond our experience, then God can begin to fill us with something new.
I am blessed to witness this courage every day in the faces of those we serve at Catholic Social Services. Our neighbors hope courageously; seniors, families, and persons living with disabilities. They hope in a future filled with possibilities!
A Lenten sacrifice is such a small gift in comparison to a lifetime of struggle for many of our neighbors. Finding the courage to hope can begin this Lent for anyone willing to make the commitment of letting go.
Our hope is not based on what we have seen or heard; it is based on the “unseen” as St. Paul reminds us. Letting go of our experiences (both good and bad) is like checking the baggage to make space for God to do something new in our life.
My prayer for you this Lent is that you embrace Vacare Deo and “waste time with God,” the One who wants nothing more than our complete love of God and of neighbor.