What are you giving up for Lent? Wait, it’s Friday — don’t eat that meat! Did you get your ashes today? Growing up, I dreaded the season of Lent and not just because my birthday had the occasional misfortune to collide with our Ash Wednesday fast. Lent seemed like a laundry list of obligations and temptations, a gantlet of self-control designed to test the strength of one’s faith and commitment and that almost always found me wanting.
“Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return” intoned the priest as he traced the ashes on my forehead. As if I could forget! At least my uneven observance of Lent always provided good fodder for the sacrament of confession, which I dutifully endured once a year during this time. And the season was not without a sense of hope and anticipation that was satisfied each year in an Easter basket brimming with chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks that the supermarkets stocked only at this time of year. If I could sum up the season of Lent in one word, it would be: Resist!
In the Christian tradition, the season of Lent is a rich amalgamation of spiritual practices from around the early Christian world: a preparation for entrance into the faith community that culminated in baptism; a commemoration of the life and death of Jesus that culminated in the feast of the Resurrection; and a penitential fast undertaken either by an individual or a community that culminated in the reconciliation of sinners. In the Western churches, this synthesis of practices settled into a regular season of some 40 days that precedes the annual Easter celebrations and came to be known by a middle-English term that captures both the natural cycle of the seasons in which it is located and the common thread that runs through all three spiritual traditions: springtime or Lent.
“Now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land” (Song of Solomon 2: 11-12). Springtime is marked by the ways the earth brings forth new life. Here in the deserts of Southern California, the scrub blooms with color and new life springs up even in the most unexpected of places.
Resurrection, baptism, reconciliation — all of these embody and proclaim the promise of transformation from death to life and to the full flourishing of creation and humanity that in turn gives life to one another. Repent! And believe in the promise of new life. This invitation to turn away from death and to turn toward life is at the heart of the Christian idea of repentance and it is an invitation open to all. In this season of springtime, can we be attentive to the new life blooming around us? How might we embrace the invitation to flourish? How might we cultivate new life in our communities and in our world?
