Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves. What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit?
Lent stirs something in us – a strange, unsolicited desire. There are intimations of a journey to be made, a hill to be climbed, a desert to be crossed. It is a call to face one’s shadows, to begin to know truly the light of one’s soul.
It is a call into our own mystery, our own depths. And something tells us that it is a dangerous and painful journey where we would rather not go. To face one’s shadows is face our wounds inflicted upon us by life’s untamed forces, wounds that often originate way back in our childhood. How often do we bury our painful emotions and think they are dead? We forget that the quality of our presence and personalities are profoundly influenced and shaped by these buried but often violent realities. We live and act out of the invisible shadow-world that revolves, silently, within us.
Lent is a special time where the goal is to pursue our authenticity. The aim is not to be sinless or perfect – but of being self-aware and integrated. In the words of Daniel O’Leary, a priest from the Leeds diocese, “the question that Lent, the season of truth, asks us is: how much reality about ourselves can we bear? Are we aware of ambiguous motives, our rampant ego, our inner envy, our urge for power? Most of us try to live the Christian life without ever entering those raw and searing cellars of our own unbearable darkness. This avoidance is easy, but costly.”
And in the words of St Padre Pio, the life of a Christian “is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self: there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain”.
Lent is a time to step aside to renew and prepare ourselves to receive the fullness of the Resurrection. Yet before there can be the joy of exuberance of new life, first there must be death – death to selfishness, death to mean-spiritedness, death to anything that serves us rather than others.
Before there can be the joy of exuberance of new life, first there must be death – death to selfishness, death to mean-spiritedness, death to anything that serves us rather than others
In Lent we grow by dying. There is no other way. In this dying we recognise the false face we’ve grown used to, to the daily lies we tell, to the thoughts of deception that crowd our minds, the infidelities we do not commit only because we fear we might get caught. Participating in the customary rituals of Lent is healthy but we are truly lost if we think these rituals alone will ever save our souls. This participation must be accompanied by our awareness of our sinful nature and our constant need for forgiveness. Worship without sacrifice is worthless. So is ritual without painful, personal surrender.
While it can seem sombre and gloomy to meditate on Jesus’ suffering and death, the essence of this prayer is to recognise the ‘cross’ in our lives so that we too may participate in Jesus’ death and resurrection.