Ash Wednesday

I read the following this morning, and found it tremendously comforting:

He remembers that we are dust.
(Psalm 103:14)

Four letter word

I.
Hate.
Lent.

Day 31: It is finished.

My month-long mini Lent ends today.

Thanks be to God.

Day 21: Wasn't Lent enough?

Wasn't Advent enough? Wasn't Lent enough? Do I truly need another season of darkness, this one worse than the other two combined?

The answer, of course, is that I must indeed need it. And intellectually I accept, and I pray that it is efficacious.

But it doesn't feel like it.

No, not at all.

Foot washing revisited

Here's an article I wrote a few years ago on what is for me one of the most heart-wrenching services. Should have thought to reference it earlier in the day...

Instilling Humility: Maundy Thursday Foot Washing

Ahh, Lent (II)

Scripture tells us that the Father disciplines those He loves.

I am apparently very much loved, indeed.

Give me wisdom

Ah Lent...

It appears that this year's Lenten torture may be revelation about the ways in which I make a poor wife. The completion of which rests on my shoulders to seek out.

To say that I am not looking forward to it is an understatement.

However, this morning's devotional reading delivered Jeremiah 1:11-19, with commentary that included:

"If God reveals something to you, ask for his wisdom to know how to deliver the message. Be assured of his strong protection as you go on his errand."

And so I am in prayer, asking for His wisdom, and thanking Him for His protection.

Ahh, the Lenten discovery continues...

I made an ugly discovery today.

Turns out I'm an obnoxiously sanctimonious little twerp.

(Except I'd substitute another word for twerp. And I'm not that little.)

Lenten Reflections

In the past few years as my faith has strengthened, God has made Lent increasingly jarring. This year it started early; Advent was a precursor of penitential days to come. At the women’s retreat in December, God sent me an intense realization of my distance from Him, and a longing so strong it was like mourning. In Weight of Glory, CS Lewis describes this experience: “The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.”

One tool of God’s furious love (as Fr. Lucas called it) was to have me give my testimony during Lent. Remembering all the damage I have done throughout the years and then admitting it out loud to a room full of people woke me to how grateful I should be for God’s rescue, and how very far I still need to go. The contrast between my works of devastation and his works of restoration and healing was laid bare.

During this time God also blessed me with glimpses of his divine love and the beauty and mystery and power of his creation. He awakened the stirrings of spring in my heart. Lewis says “We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

He gave me visions of his love, and then showed me how very little I deserve such a gift. I have had to face my selfishness, my disobedience, and my lack of charity and prudence.

Bishop Fulton Sheen said that God looks at us the way a mother looks upon the dirty face of her child, and sees the divine image shining from it. What a lovely, lovely contemplation. And while I believe that I have been made in the image and likeness of God as Fr. Robert reminds us, it seems my face will never be clean enough to gaze upon the glory of Christ.

Peter Kreeft says that we are like the crippled man by the pool of Siloam. We want to get into the water to be healed, but we can’t get into the water because we are not healed. We need to be holy, we can’t be holy. We need to be just, we can’t be just. We need to be like Christ, we can’t be like Christ.

As sojourners in this time and place, we are caught between the promise of his love, mercy, and forgiveness, and the reality of our unworthiness. We can’t see how the two can ever be reconciled. (Or at least I can’t. I pray that you can.)

And now Holy Week is here. The week in which God himself will wash my feet (my feet!), will sweat blood alone in the garden while I sleep, will be scourged while I huddle near the warmth of a fire, will be nailed to a cross while I hide from the realization of how it feels to betray, and finally, will die in agony while I whine about my puny crosses. I enter Holy Week feeling a worm and not a woman, unworthy of his slightest thought let alone the bountiful blessing and trust he has poured out.

The burden of my ingratitude is heavy.

But even as I write during these dark final days when we move from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!”, a glimmer of light shines. For on Sunday, despite having turned away from him over and over again, despite leaving him to suffer and die alone, on Sunday he renews our baptismal covenant with him. On Sunday our wedding vows are renewed and we become once again his bride, and he our spouse. And despite our many failings, our repeated betrayals, he comes to us in the eternal wedding feast; we receive him, and are received.

The Lenten journey is not just Christ’s, it is ours as well. And eventually our Easter will come.

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Instilling Humility: Maundy Thursday Foot Washing

Lent is a time when God works on humility, and the Maundy Thursday foot washing service is a powerful Lenten teaching tool.

During TCC’s first Holy Week we held a foot washing service in the forum room at Bethel. We were still new to the liturgy and had not yet settled into the tradition of having priests, deacons, and altar servers acting “in persona Christi” for the foot washing. Instead, parishioners came up and had their feet washed, then stayed to wash the feet of others. I’d planned to participate in that act of service, and was fully intending to when the service began.

But while I waited and watched, the reality of my unworthiness to act in the role of Christ in such an intimate way was overwhelming. Who was I to mimic such a sublimely humble act? It was a struggle to force myself to get up and receive the sacramental action; participating beyond that was not imaginable.

There is something about the foot washing ceremony that is spiritually jarring. In it, transcendence and imminence overlap. Our God, the creator of the universe who stepped into time before presenting himself as the once and always sacrifice to Himself, picks up basin and cloth to wash the dust from our feet. Our feet; those blushingly intimate body parts which we prefer to keep under wraps. Our feet which collect the dirt and sweat and grime of the world.

Each year since that first service, I react the same way. I respond as Peter did, saying “No, you shall never wash my feet!”

I am unworthy even to be the woman crying tears over His feet, drying them with my hair and anointing them with expensive perfume, let alone receiving such attention.

So to think of Him washing my feet?

Each year, I anticipate and dread this wonderful, heart wrenching service. Each year I am overcome with tears. Each year I am profoundly moved.

If you haven’t come to a foot washing service before, please try to come this year. In this humble act God manifests the human character of His love for us, and its breadth. From creation itself, to foot washing—He loves us.

The Season of Lent

Lent is the Old English word for spring. In almost all other languages, Lent's name is a derivative of the Latin term quadragesima or "the forty days." 40 is the traditional number of days for discipline, devotion, and preparation. Just think of Moses on the mountain, Elijah on his travels to the cave of visions, Nineveh’s deadline to repent, and most significantly, Jesus' time in the wilderness praying, fasting, and experiencing the temptation that humanity faces:

For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning. (Heb. 4:15)

By the solemn forty days of Lent, the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert. “To follow and imitate Christ more nearly and to manifest more clearly his self-emptying is to be more deeply present to one’s contemporaries, in the heart of Christ. For those who are on this narrower path encourage their brethren by their example…”

Rev. Lawrence E. Mick wrote that Lent is “radically baptismal”, which is right up TCC’s alley! He said that our current 40 day observation grew out of 3 original sources; an ancient 2-day paschal fast before Easter, the “Catechumenate” preparation for baptism of adults, and the “Order of Penitents” conversion process for baptized people who had fallen but were ready to turn away from serious sin.

As the Catechumen (those who were being prepared) went through the process, the rest of the congregation walked with them spiritually, renewing their own baptismal promises.
This idea of a second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, “clasping sinners to her bosom, is at once holy and always in need of purification, and follows constantly the path of penance and renewal.”

Lent is a penitential season, and the 3 keys to penitence are prayer, fasting, and charity or almsgiving.

Fasting helps us “acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart.” Self-denial and acts of penance help us uproot the rule of sin in our lives, and in the world.

A common practice during Lent is to give up something we enjoy. By doing this, we discipline our wills so that we are not slaves to our pleasures. When we train ourselves to resist temptations that are not sinful, we increase our ability to resist temptations that are sinful.

Fridays during Lent are days of abstinence from meat. Abstaining from meat helps us remember the needs of the poor. Some families eat simple meals such as rice and beans on Friday, and give the money that would have been used for the meal to the poor. If you give up steak but eat lobster, you’re missing the point!

We don’t hear about charity as a Lenten practice as often as the other disciplines, however, almsgiving and charity are logical acts during this season, as they are outward signs and actions that our inner conversion is real and that we take Jesus’ instructions seriously. Isaiah 58:6-7 reads:

This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke; sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and the homeless; clothing the naked when you see them, and not turning your back on your own.

Jesus’ call to conversion and penance does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes”, fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false. Interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures, and works of penance.

Fasting should be linked to our concern for those who are forced to fast by their poverty. Connecting charitable acts with fasting activities, for example, donating food we would otherwise have eaten to the hungry, brings a particular richness and depth of understanding to our Lenten experience.

Please consider incorporating the practices of prayer, fasting, and charity into your life this Lenten season, so that you can reach new levels of spiritual breadth and preparation.

This article contains excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church ©1994 and from Lenten Customs, Baptism is the Key by Rev. Lawrence E. Mick.