Growing Fonder Hearts
FROM THE RECTOR
Lent is upon us. Next Wednesday, in addition to being Valentine’s Day, is the day we will receive our ashen crosses, acknowledge our mortality, and begin our annual spiritual pilgrimage to Easter. I have joked in the announcements on Sunday morning that you had better be thinking of a creative way to say to your beloved both “I love you” and “you are going to die someday,” but, all joking aside, that is precisely what the church declares to us during Lent.
Because of our sinfulness, we must wrestle with our mortality, but, because of Jesus’ resurrection, that mortality does not define us. Holding those two truths together and embracing the fullness of each is a complicated but rewarding lifelong spiritual process, and Lent is designed to invite us back into that work of recognizing our humanity while embracing God’s gift of unconditional love. In a coincidental collision of solar and lunar calendars, the overlap of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday is an image for that dual focus.
Every year, I notice that people are drawn back to church during Lent. Our attendance on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights increases, and participation in weekday programs goes up. In addition to our normal, already-full schedule, we add a weekly contemplative Eucharist called Ancient Roots, offer Stations of the Cross after Evening Prayer on Fridays, and have Evensong every Sunday night. This year we are beginning a new partnership with Central United Methodist Church that will feature a weekly midday sermon and soup lunch on Tuesdays that will alternate between our two churches. Why do we pack so much into the forty days of Lent?
On Wednesday, we will hear the annual invitation to a holy Lent prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. With those words, we will be reminded that, just as converts to the Christian faith once used this season to prepare their hearts for Baptism at the Easter Vigil, the whole congregation now follows that pattern of anticipating the Feast of the Resurrection through acts of spiritual renewal. In addition to partaking in some of the church’s many Lenten offerings, people frequently give something up or take something on as a spiritual discipline. We do so not because God requires it but because our hearts do.
Many Protestant denominations ignore Lent altogether, yet for them Easter still comes. You, too, can forego all of the spiritual offerings of this season, and the power of the resurrection will still find you, but experiencing the paradoxical truth of your sinfulness and God’s unconditional forgiveness is worth some effort. God will love you just the same whether you give up chocolate or indulge on Valentine’s Day, but for some remembering our dependence on God’s love and mercy is a little easier when a growling stomach beckons us to prayer.
Although the church can invite all of us to a season of fasting and penitence, how we get to Easter is up to us. If you want to give something up to help prepare yourself for the joy of the resurrection, do so out of desire and not obligation. Abstaining from a favorite food or drink can produce a longing that reminds us of our mortality, but a grumpy disposition is no way to experience the truth of God’s triumph over that mortality. Let your spiritual disciplines draw you closer to God’s universal love, not make that love harder to see. Then you can greet the joy of Easter with a full heart.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan D. Garner