Lent should be about serious spiritual renewal. Here is a story from the Internet to make the point.
Imagine you’re a bishop on a walk in a quiet, picturesque cemetery. It’s a chilly Lenten day and you’re minding your own business. You’re weary from a long day’s work, and have not even taken time to get out of your work clothes (clerical attire) because you’ve got another function to go tonight somewhere. Soon after you settle into a comfortable pace, a poorly dressed man walks in your direction. You pay no attention. As he draws close to you, however, he stops. The next thing you know he’s thrusting a knife at your neck, demanding “money or your life.” Unfortunately there’s no money to be given. The wallet is at home. The assailant keeps insisting. Frightened out of your wits, you remember you stuck a snack in your pocket. You point to the candy bar and tell him it’s all you’ve got — he can have it. At this suggestion, the man looks at you in utter disbelief and protests, “No way, Father. I don’t eat chocolate during Lent.”
Apparently this story was recounted by the late Archbishop Gerald Bergan of Omaha, Neb. who used to make people laugh with it. I too laughed heartily. But let’s not forget the point behind it: how absurd our Lenten penances can be: not eating candy, fasting to lose weight, giving up coffee, liquor or TV. For what if they do not get us closer to God? Have these practices changed my attitudes and behavior? Not one iota. They only feed our hungry egos, so that at Easter we feel real pride about our self-discipline. But have we gotten closer to God?
I’ve read several books recently by Henri Nouwen. The famous Dutch priest who taught among other places in Yale and Harvard. Spent his last years living with handicapped in L’Arche. Died in 1996. He is a very clear, easily readable writer that uses language accessible to everybody. There’s nothing tortuous or convoluted about his style. When he uses long sentences they are never ponderous. You don’t have to read them over to understand. A bit like me, really. Also like me, he studied psychology rather than theology. Again like me he lived all his life away from his beloved native country. One other thing that we seem to hold in common is an immense sense of human fragility. His great need for constant affirmation, recognition, for praise and his huge vulnerability to criticism. An unkind remark or rejection would plunge him into bouts of self-loathing and despair. It may look a bit pathetic and pitiable from a distance but there is no denying the self-crucifixion & Calvary involved and well chronicled in his books. But some of his insights are mind-blowing, veritable illuminations.
He is considered one of the best spiritual writers of the modern age. He wrote about bringing modern secular people to deeper spirituality. He comes across as a person genuinely interested in God.
One of his greatest insights has to do with the gospel of this weekend. I will probably be able to expand better in church but here I want to offer a taste from the bulletin to those who don’t come to my masses or may only see or read me on the church website. The First Sunday of Lent always has the gospel of the Temptations of Christ in the desert and Luke dwells at length on it. Jesus is vexed relentlessly by the Devil with subtle suggestions, cunning provocations, hallucinations and visions of power and glory.
We all experience these seductions, allurements, fascinations with the darker side of our natures. But maybe Jesus teaches us something profound. The only way by which Jesus overcomes, says Nouwen, is by hanging on firmly to his Belovedness and we must do the same. Jesus greatest moment, mystery of light is His Baptism. It was the greatest Trinitarian affirmation of his life. The Holy Spirit of God descends upon him in the form of a dove and fills his human soul. The gospel also says that a mighty voice came from the heavens and thundered: You are my beloved son. It declares Jesus the beloved Son of God.
It is a thunder because it must be heard above the roaring of all the wrong voices who like nefarious sirens want to lure us away from the chosen path. It is a thunder because it must be heard above the shrillness of the world that want to diminish us and turn us into commodities, and fill us with needs and addictions, so that like little slaves we bow down, worship, submit to the new demons.
Well, says Henri Nouwen, spirituality is about reaching this inner place, the house of perfect love where we can live and inhabit this belovedness. It is precisely this belovedness that enables Christ to retain his composure and sense of freedom under immense provocations; it allows him to be loving and tender with the poor, the week, and the infirm. It is this belovedness that pours out of his mouth. He is obsessed with God and to do what God wants. Nothing pleases him more than to put his whole life in God’s hands for God to do whatever. Period.
