ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
March 8, 2022
Recently, I was asked by someone who did not have much background in Christianity to explain the Season of Lent (40 days leading us to Easter), and I gave a rather boring and academic description. Let’s just say the individual did not walk away enthused about the idea of leaping into the experience. I then came across an article in Christian Century, written by a Religion Professor named Debra Dean Murphy. She wrote the following about Lent…
To enter the season of Lent is to walk through an open door. Corporately we ritualize the traversing with the imposition of ashes—the black, sooty smudge a sign that death is the last threshold we will cross. In the liturgy we are asked to meditate on that truth. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. The sojourn in Lent, if we are able to abide it, is 40 days of contending with our mortality such that we might come to know more fully what it means to live. It isn’t a way station so much as a working ranch: space and time to labor on the hard and necessary thing, to “keep death daily before our eyes,” as St. Benedict counsels.
The journey into our humanity and the revelations that emerge from confrontations with our mortality shape how we live our lives more than we might admit or even know. Some people are formed by the fear they feel, and sadly insecurity then drives their decisions and actions. Others find an understanding of life crowded with beauty and grace that leaves them awe-struck. Suddenly, this second group is living life from a place of abundance and joy. Some folks deride religious rituals like Lent and Ash Wednesday as sanctimonious nonsense, but human beings are very much shaped by the rituals and practices they choose to undertake with intentionality.
Help me to prioritize this day, O God, so I find space and time to journey with your Spirit past the darkness of mortality and into the light of life. Amen.
