What is Lent?
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| The Temptation. Bruce Herman. From the series "Golgotha" |
“Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Remember O mortal that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Repent and believe the good news.”
The words of the liturgy and the practice of Lent are vivid symbols that shape the Christian life. It draws together future promise with the broken realities of the world by binding discipline and hope in the practice of fasting.
Why Fast?
The discipline of fasting, and the words spoken in the liturgy of Ash Wednesday compel us to recall our nature as created, embodied, fallen and redeemed people. Acknowledging our dependency on our Creator rather than on created things – even good created things like food, places our desires in their rightful context.We can lose everything that is good about a thing when we allow created goods to transform us into their image, and fasting is a physical reminder of this spiritual reality.
Pope Benedict XVI offered these reflections on Lent, “Denying material food, which nourishes our body, nurtures an interior disposition to listen to Christ and be fed by His saving word. Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God.” Fasting readily reveals (perhaps more than any other discipline) what we have allowed to control our thoughts, passions, and lives. Furthermore, once these things have been revealed, fasting reminds us that it is not in our power to heal, but only through reliance on God may we be healed through His power. This is difficult to accept in our self-indulgent, self-reliant society which aims to be in control of providing and satisfying every want. Our spiritual hunger for God is often threatened because our physical appetites for material goods are so intense. Therefore we fast to fight for a hunger that isn’t- a hunger for the Bread of Heaven
Secondly, the practice of fasting awakes us in solidarity to the situation of so many of our brothers and sisters world-wide. As Benedict further notes “Voluntary fasting enables us to grow in the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bends low and goes to the help of his suffering brother (cf. Encyclical Deus caritas est, 15). By freely embracing an act of self-denial for the sake of another, we make a statement that our brother or sister in need is not a stranger.” As movements in the Evangelical context seek to illuminate the call within the Gospel to seek solidarity and to alleviate the plight of those who are poor in spirit, the season of Lent provides a spiritual practice that combines a love for Christ and the world that is grounded in tradition.
Keeping A Holy Lent As A Physical And Spiritual Act Of Worship
When it comes to bodily worship, many Evangelicals come close to Gnosticism in their practices. While this may have a number of historical reasons to trace back, it remains that Evangelicals need to take up practices that unities the physical and spiritual in acts of worship. The relationship between the temporal and eternal is deeply connected with our bodies. It is through our bodies; in the corporate and individual sense that are able we see God’s providence in our lives and be in communion with one another. Augustine ends The City of God with the hope of the promise that in the life to come with will see God, for “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”.
For Augustine, this "seeing God" is not fulfilled in an incorporeal spiritual sense. The Incarnation is a testament to the goodness of the Body. The body as fallen has been redeemed by Christ choosing to come among us become a person with a body, and live in world marred by sin. Therefore, the human shape of Jesus’ life is not something alongside Jesus’ divinity but the manifestation of that divinity as a human whole. This view of Jesus allows us as his follows to take up his way of life in a distinct way; because he himself has created for us the way for new life we can live as he did in every way.
For Augustine, the Body of Christ on earth is how we see God. Thus it is not only in death, but in life that we see God through our bodies. Yet while we image Christ on earth, we yearn yet for the Kingdom of Heaven, when death and sin can no longer wreck destruction on our bodies and relationships. We long for the day when earth is inherited by the meek. Until this time, in our time, we must live as ‘strangers and aliens’.
Journeying Through The Lenten Season With Hopeful Longing For The Risen Christ
Until the world is at peace, how are our bodies to feel at home in a world whose powers oppress the poor, seek individual gratification, and distort the dignity of our very bodies? Like Abraham, we sojourn in a land that is not ours by inheritance, but rather by promise. Until then we long for the time of the redemption of the world, when “He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.”
Practices such as Lent, when in fasting we must connect hope and discipline by relying on Christ to enable our broken will to desire rightly, are crucial in our lives, especially in the mist of the formation of a world that that rewards self reliance and even pride. Consider following the lives of the saints before you and take up the practice of Lent to prepare for Easter this year. It’s not just for the Catholics, Evangelicals need Lent too, because we all need to be transformed in the image of Christ.
