Last Minute Lenten Thoughts
Just in
case you feel as though you have not properly prepared
for Easter at this late Lenten Date, here are some
thoughts and disciplines you might like to consider.
Ideally, as a tribute to our resurrected and ever
present Lord, you will initiate some new forms of
devotion based on the themes of Lent. May Christ our
Lord bless you as you seek to live each day for him and
in service to others. Peace, Vicar Jon.
The intent of this research paper is to explore several
different aspects of the Lenten Season that will enable
Christians to grow in their embodiment of the faith and
to present the time of Lent as a time of preparation for
celebrating the Paschal Feast at the resurrection of
Christ Jesus from the tomb. Whether you are a long-term
member of the Church or if this Lenten season is your
first season of introduction into the Christian faith,
there are valuable lessons and experiences to be
undertaken during Lent. Within this report I will draw
on the experience of the Patristic Fathers and early
Church history that reflects the ancient traditions
practiced, which enlighten and bring a unified
understanding of the faith to all members in the church.
It is my contention that Christians living in the dawn
of the twenty-first century have a great need to engage
themselves in tangible examples of devotion to God and
exercises of faith through practice.
This is true
because of the highly competitive atmosphere that
prevails in today’s modern media culture. The Christian
faith has a great need for its adherents to become more
intensely aware of their self-assertion and embodiment
in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Undergoing a tangible experience of the faith can
provide the means necessary for Christians develop their
spirituality in powerful ways. Faith that is tested is
able, in its humility, to shine as a bright light amidst
the noise and tumult of the world we live in. In order
to accomplish this “tested faith” there is the need of
setting aside time for significant reflection on one’s
individual trueness to the faith as well as the need to
contemplate the meaning of belonging as a member of
Christ’s mystical body--the Church.
The season of Lent should be a time of disciplined
excitement. Each new day should bring us new words for
prayer and new challenges to undertake in the Holy
Scriptures. The goal of Lent is to experience a
deepening of meaning and relationship with the risen
Christ. In order to obtain this freshening of our faith
the church has instituted observances, times set aside
and active means of discipline by which we may remind
ourselves that we are in a time of preparation for the
Paschal announcement, “Christ is risen!” Some
traditional forms of preparatory observance have
included: “Abstention from flesh, fish, eggs, and dairy
products. Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) and the
Apostolic Constitutions (5.18) mandate the eating of
bread, salt, water, and boiled vegetables only. Some
Christians had only one light meal toward the end of the
day. Fasting rules relaxed after the ninth century. The
Eastern Church retains both the duration and the
strictness of fasting of the early centuries. The fast
was a period of penitence and spiritual preparation for
the baptized Christians and a period of instruction for
the catechumens, as the Catechesis of Cyril of Jerusalem
(d. 386) indicate.” Intentional engagement in the
penitential season of Lent is a good way to balance the
life of faith within the powerful cultural currents in
which we live.
As an explicative against being drawn down the rushing
stream of the world’s torrents
St. Leo (mid-fifth century) recommends alternative forms
of fasting. “‘Our fast,’ he declares, ‘does not consist
chiefly of mere abstinence from food, nor are dainties
withdrawn from our bodily appetites with profit, unless
the mind is recalled from wrong-doing and the tongue
restrained from slandering. . . . For it is not enough
that the substance of our flesh should be reduced, if
the strength of the soul be not also developed.’
Finally, he urges:’ let us enter upon the celebration of
the solemn fast, not with barren abstinence from food .
. . but in bountiful benevolence.’” p.9
Thus, we are
encouraged to enter into a fast (or fasts) of our
self-indulgence. By this teaching from St. Leo, we can
learn about fulfilling “self denial” by giving
materially or through the medium of our physical talents
and skills offered in service to others. Through this
proactive form of fasting we can make a deliberate
entrance onto the path of service that Jesus calls us to
in caring for others. We will be most truly engaging in
this fast when the beneficiary of our self denial is
someone we have never served before or something, such
as an animate or inanimate being from the natural world,
who has need of protection of restoration in order to
flourish as God intended from the beginning of creation.
Our service to the stranger becomes a form of devotion
and adoration of Jesus who suffered and died for all of
humanity and all of creation.
Lent is also an intentional period for personal and
corporate lament for sins and waywardness from Christ.
St. Leo maintains that “‘we should remain in God’s sight
always the same, as we ought to be found on the Easter
feast itself.’ But since few actually do so, ‘The Divine
Providence has with great beneficence taken care that
the discipline of the forty days should heal us and
restore purity of our minds, during which the faults of
other times might be redeemed by pious acts and removed
by chaste fasting.” This is a serious business, the
overcoming of temptations and sins during Lent. The
intention of the Christian is to place a special
emphasis on works of piety, which might be justified in
the name of the cross. Luke’s gospel instructs the
church to live out the Lenten fast daily as Jesus tells
us, “If any want to be my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”
(Luke 9:23).
St. Leo exhorts the would be Lenten disciples to prepare
to do battle in order to maintain a disciplined life,
“‘As we approach then, dearly beloved, the beginning of
Lent, which is a time for the more careful serving of
the Lord, because we are, as it were, entering into a
kind of contest in good works, let us prepare our souls
for fighting with temptations, and understand that the
more zealous we are for our salvation, the more
determined must be the assaults of our opponents.’”
Thus, we should remain vigilant to take note how easily
our good intentions are undermined by the enemy of our
souls. We must redevote our little works to Christ, and
entrust our weak selves fully to him as a continual
process of the Lenten discipline. Remaining humble and
disowning our self-righteous piety is always a struggle,
one that John Cassian will provide a corrective for as
will be found further on in this writing.
The forty days of Lent are also an exciting time of
entering or reentering into the commitment of faith by
following the historic tradition of the Church through
the ages. From the writings of John Cassian (495 c.e.),
also known as “The Blessed Cassian,” leader of monastic
orders, we gain a sense of the prevalent cultural
condition for Christians during the time of the early
fifth century. Cassian explains about the importance of
the observance of Lent due in part to an increasing
level of laxity as Christianity has become absorbed into
secular culture:
“But when the multitude of believers began day by day to
decline from that apostolic fervor, and to look after
their own wealth, and not to portion it out for the good
of all the faithful in accordance with the arrangement
of the apostles, but having an eye to their own private
expenses, tried not only to keep it but actually to
increase it, not content with following the example of
Ananias and Sapphira, then it seemed good to all the
priests that men who were hampered by worldly cares, and
almost ignorant . . . of abstinence and contrition,
should be recalled to the pious duty by a fast
canonically enjoined, and be constrained by the
necessity of paying the legal tithes, as this certainly
would be good for the weak brethren and could not do any
harm to the perfect who were living under the grace of
the gospel and by their voluntary devotion going beyond
the law, so as to succeed in attaining to the
blessedness which the Apostle speaks of: “For sin shall
not have dominion over you’ for ye are not under the law
but under grace."
In spite of the unsalvific nature of good deeds, we are
yet compelled to act and enact our good works as a
reasonable response to the good work accomplished by
Christ the crucified One. Besides of which, our adopting
an active form of Lenten discipline will become an
important step toward journeying with Christ to the
Cross. While keeping watch with Jesus during Lent is in
fact an experience wherein Jesus remains present with us
(after all, we are living and practicing a post
resurrection faith!), Lenten disciples need to keep a
sober check on the inherent invasion of darkness that
becomes increasingly present as Jesus is betrayed into
the hands of sinful men and women. The presence of evil
and darkness must be balanced with our present hope in
the resurrected Christ as we contemplate alternative
forms of fasting. We should seek to challenge ourselves
or undertake the instruction of a Lenten guide such as
the pastor or other spiritual leader who can point out
our weaknesses and suggest some good practice to deepen
our faith and commitment to Jesus. In the ancient
monastic orders such as the Benedictines, it was the
abbot who acted as a type of spiritual taskmaster. The
monks were bound to his orders and to the disciplines
that he prescribed.
From The Rule of St. Benedict we hear that “the whole
life of a monk ought to be a continual Lent.” However,
St. Benedict admits that such intense devotion would be
uncommon amongst even the most faithful and clarifies
his statement by saying, “I advise everyone, during the
holy season of Lent, to practice particular purity of
life, and redeem their negligence of other times. This
will be rightly performed if we control our faults, and
betake ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to
compunction of heart and to abstinence. . . . In Lent
everyone must of his own accord add something above his
usual practice; for example, by offering more prayer in
private, by taking less than usual in food and drink, so
that everyone may, with comfort in the Holy Ghost, make
a voluntary sacrifice to God of something beyond what is
normally appointed him. This means that each shall
deprive his body of something in eating, drinking,
sleeping, talking and the little liberties of merriment
and discourse; and he is to look forward, with a pure
joy of spirit, to the holy feast of Easter. . . .” [And
of course!] “Everything must be done with the abbot’s
approval.”
Fasting may take the form of good works or intercessory
prayer -- preferably for someone that we do not know and
will never be in a position of paying us back for the
kindness. Praying for one’s explicit enemies may prove
to be a most useful discipline and a valid form of
contemplating Christ’s prayers for his persecutors and
executioners at Golgotha: “Father, forgive them for they
know not what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). Cassian
instructs the monks under his care that their fasting
must be kept pure and not carried out as though it were
a form of cursing and temptation -- for this is
blasphemous. “There is too another evil sort of vexation
which would not be worth mentioning were it not that we
know it is allowed by some of the brethren who, when
they have been vexed or enraged actually abstain
persistently from food, [and in such a state do not]
feel fasts even for two days.” In this instance the
fasting is in actuality an expression of rage and anger
to which Cassian responds, “Wherein they are plainly
guilty of the sin of sacrilege, as out of the devils own
rage they endure fasts which ought especially be offered
to God alone out of desire for humility of heart and
purification from sin.” Cassian then adds Deuteronomy
32:17, “They sacrificed to devils and not to God; to
gods whom they knew not.”
Thus, we may take instruction from Cassian’s teaching
that our fasting, whether for our personal purification
and enlightenment or for some great cause that comes to
burden our consciousness or is raised to a high level of
concern as we consider the state of our world in light
of Christ’s conflagration with the Temple authorities or
his rebuking the disciples, in all of these things we
must discipline our mind in fasting, in order that we
may offer up our human angers and frustrations to God
and purify our thoughts such that our concerns are
indeed godly. We must be careful in the intention of our
hearts that we have not allowed our “selves” to become
the central theme of appeasement, but the emotions and
the intellect must be transferred to God as a burnt
offering -- like that exemplified in Leviticus: “Then
the priest shall turn the whole [offering] into smoke on
the altar as a burnt offering, an offering by fire of
pleasing odor to the Lord” (Leviticus 1:9b). We may also
gain instruction from the New Testament equivalent where
we are instructed by the Apostle Peter, “Like living
stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house,
to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5).
These forms of devotion and self-sacrifice make good
models for the giving up of ourselves to God and in
service to others during Lent -- an acceptable practice
of remaining with Christ in the Garden, of not denying
him outside of the wall when the rooster crows, and of
staying nearby as he is in agony on the cross. Thus, we
offer the little gifts of our time, energy, influence
and devotion during Lent.
Athanasius, St. of Alexandria, (293-373) tells us that
being an adherent to the call of Lenten discipleship is
to be as an Israelite who must purify him or herself
before entering into the Temple of Jerusalem. In this
short discourse of Athanasius, all Christians are
challenged to consider the extent of our willingness to
prepare ourselves for greeting the resurrected Christ on
Easter Sunday: “Let us first be purified and purged, so
that when we depart hence, having been careful of
fasting, we may be able to ascend to the upper chamber
with the Lord, to sup with Him; and may be partakers of
the joy which is in heaven. In no other manner shall we
be able to go up to Jerusalem, and to earn the Passover,
but as we apply ourselves to the fast of forty days.”
Elsewhere Athanasius writes in a fervent tone about the
importance of fasting as a church wide practice, the
text that follows even suggests a form of fellowship and
unity that although painful for the forty days, serves
as a reminder to all Christians that fasting during Lent
is a trademark discipline for Christians and all should
participate equally: “For I have written this to each
one -- that thou shouldst proclaim the fast of forty
days to the brethren, and persuade them to fast; to the
end that, while all the world is fasting, we who are in
Egypt should not become a laughing-stock, as the only
people who do not fast, but take our pleasure in these
days.
For if we do not fast, because the Letter is
[only] then read, it is right that we should take away
this pretext also, and that it be read before the fast
of forty days, so that they may not make this an excuse
for neglect of fasting. Also, when it is read, they may
be able to learn respecting the fast. But, O, our
beloved, whether in this way or any other, exhort and
teach them to fast forty days. For it is even a disgrace
that when all the world does this, those alone who are
in Egypt, instead of fasting, should find their
pleasure. For even I also, being grieved because men
make a laughing-stock of us for this, have been
constrained thus to write to thee. When thou, therefore, receivest the letters, and hast read them and given the
exhortation, write to me in return, our beloved, that I
also may rejoice upon learning it.”
One final alternative is to think and act as one of the
early Desert Fathers, Abba Paul the Great. “It was said
of Abba Paul that he spent the whole of Lent eating only
one measure of lentils, drinking one small jug of water,
and working at one single basket, weaving it and
unweaving it, living alone until the feast. Abba Paul
said, “Keep close to Jesus.” Even though Abba Paul’s
Lenten discipline is most likely unattainable for
average Christians, yet we can meditate on his extreme
asceticism and consider how his tremendous slowness of
pace, deepness of thought, and depth of intention might
enable us to slow our pace in order to contemplate more
fully and completely what it means to spend each day of
Lent attempting to understand and working through the
meaning of “Keeping close to Jesus”-- hour by hour and
day by day.
Amen
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more writings of Pastor Jon