The joy of lent.featured
As we enter Lent, I find myself called to approach it in a new way. I spent last Lent – in truth the majority of last year – meditating on the way of the cross. Reading and rereading the Gospel accounts. Focusing on each painful step and stab of agony. Weeping with Mary at the foot of the cross. Watching how Christ cared for his loved ones. How they cared for him.
One of the most profound moments I found was Christ giving John to Mary and Mary to John. In the final moments of His agony, only days before His triumphant resurrection, He took time to establish an earthly family for His beloved. A way for them to care and provide for each other. To live this life fully and well, knowing that at the end of their lives He would bring them to Himself.
At the time, I was struck with overwhelming comfort in the midst of my sorrow. God will not abandon my family when I die. He will provide people to care for them and love them well in my absence. He will mourn with them and give His mother to comfort them. He will ache for the cross they bear.
The longer I have meditated on this moment, the more I see it also as a confirmation that our lives are more than a way station. Our vocations and relationships and creativity aren’t meant to bide time, but to contribute in a deep, meaningful way to our world being made new.
I tend to view Lent as a time of mourning. The more extreme the sacrifice and ardent and numerous the prayers, the more we’re “doing it right.” This view of the world and our rightful place in it seeps into everyday life as well. We cast ourselves as martyrs in an end-of-days drama and prepare for the role by seeking detachment from everything in this life. We tell ourselves that this is the only holy preparation for heaven.
Certainly there is a rightful sobriety to Lent that differs drastically from the Church’s seasons of celebration. Rigid discipline and sought out sacrifice can lead us to holiness. But it’s not a guarantee. And I think there is a danger in getting so wrapped up in how we should worship and sacrifice and pray that we miss the lives we’ve been given. We miss the God who is present in their midst.
The beauty of the Church’s exhortation for Lent is that it draws us into relationship with God through prayer, into care and consideration of our embodied humanity through fasting, and into relationship with each other through almsgiving. The aim of these calls is not sadness. It is restructuring our lives so we can live them more fully in the richness and abundance we were created to experience. As Christ said, “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:11).
The world is broken. Pain and suffering, war and crisis, disease and unrest flood headlines at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to see beyond their glare. Sorrow and grief tear at our hearts from half a world away, from beside us in the suffering of our loved ones, and within us in our own.
And yet, we live in a world created by God from a love so deep it defies our imagination. No amount of brokenness or evil has the power to erase what God has made good. No person or situation is beyond redemption. The image of God in His creation cannot be fully obscured or irrevocably stained. The work of making all things new, which Christ has begun and invited us to join, is happening now. The beauty of creation and the richness of this life are more true and more profound than its brokenness.
This Lent, I am longing to draw close to Christ by contemplating beauty in the people and moments I encounter each day. To see His face in the exuberant joy that explosively bursts from my four year old. To see it also in the faces of those who suffer. To refuse the temptation to reduce their plight to confirmation of a particular political leaning and instead give them the attention and care they deserve.
To hold vigil in quiet and rote prayer and to recognize that my delight in God’s creation is a prayer of praise just as essential. To study His law not as a set of punitive restrictions but as a gift showing us how to live in the fullness for which we were created. To quiet or silence screens not as a token sacrifice of a bad habit, but to give my eyes and ears more time to see His beauty and hear His voice. To fast not as punishment for my body, but in an effort to nourish it well. To dive into scripture not out of obligation to a reading plan, but in search of the Love who reveals Himself through poetry, song, genealogy, and history.
Our paths to holiness do not always look the same. The way we live our vocations changes with the seasons of our lives. When my natural inclination to joy feels like a rebellion, I remind myself that joy is not less holy than somber piety. We are made for joy. We are made for beauty. The rebellion I feel is not against holiness, but against the brokenness that would draw me to despair. True joy does not disregard or seek to minimize the real suffering that surrounds us. It draws us into it and through it to beauty ever present. Half a world away, next to us, and inside of us.
