Both Polish film director Krzysztof Kieslowski and Australian novelist Liane Moriarty give us dramatic stories about people who discovered a letter that was meant to be read by them only after the death of the writer.
In Decalogue IV, just one in a string of 10 gems, Kieslowski shares with us Anka’s angst on finding an envelope underneath her father’s passport, inscribed: “To be opened after my death.” In that envelope there was another letter written by her mother who died just after Anka’s birth.
Cecilia Fitzpatrick, the protagonist of Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret, was a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. She finds a letter written by her still alive husband who wanted her to read it only after his death.
Anka decides to burn the letter instead of exploring the secret it might reveal. Her relationship with her father, whom she suspected was not her biological father, consequently remained as it was. Cecilia opens and reads the letter. Everything changed after that, and not just for her.
Through both masterpieces, we are challenged to face an important existential question: should we face ourselves and our reality for what it is or should we somehow skirt around it? Probably there is no single answer.
It is quite tempting to choose the second alternative. Facing ourselves and our reality can be very painful. On the other hand, living the sort of lie implied in thesecond option can inhibit one from living life to the full.
Are Christian beliefs and their enactment in special times, such as Lent, any good at helping us find an answer to this dilemma? Can they help us – individually and communally – to embark on a life journey that helps us to discover ourselves, warts and all, but finally find redemption and a better quality of life?
The answer is definitely in the affirmative but only if Lent is fully understood and lived.
Over the ages, this season has been reduced, at least in the perception of many, as the time of individualist spirituality, consisting mainly of giving up things. Take, for example, this quote from Moriarty’s The Secret Husband to understand how uselessly frustrating such a narrow understanding of Lent can be:
“Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open fridge, staring at it longingly. The power of denial.”
Should we face ourselves and our reality for what it is or should we somehow skirt around it?
Lent is light years distant from this restricted and restrictive interpretation. It should be the period leading to the communal and societal opening of the sealed letter (namely, a deep analysis of society as it truly is) in the belief that the pain it will reveal because of inherent and structural injustices can eventually, though painstakingly, lead to a new way of living.
This collective discernment should be done in the certitude that we never walk alone and that God accompanies us, and that at the end of Lent there is Easter, the ultimate guarantee that politics based on truth, justice and fairness will triumph in the end. Within this perspective it should be clear that Lent is not the season for denial but the season for refurbishing; it is not the time for giving up things but the time for new acquisitions.
Last Wednesday, Matthew’s rendering of the Sermon on the Mount proposed the tripartite Lenten strategy of fasting, charity and prayer. It would be very myopic to look at all this as just a pietistic plan for individual conversion. The Sermon on the Mount is a réveille for radical societal changes; an outline of a political strategy.
Fasting, prayer and almsgiving are the antithesis of the glorification of consumption, production and money, which are the foundation stones of a dehumanising capitalist society gone awry. Fasting is a declaration that we can live without making consumption our idol. Humans are much more than what they consume. Humans do not live by bread alone. During prayer we ‘waste’ time, as prayer does not produce. When we pray we are making a strong subversive statement that progress is not achieved by production alone. John Wesley rightly used to say that prayer is where the action is.
Almsgiving undermines the secular dogma that only money makes the world go around. It is the affirmation that it is not acceptable for some to have enough money to live decently while others lack basic necessities. It is a duty emanating from our common human nature.
During Lent we nurture the belief in the definitive victory of the Resurrected Christ and the feasibility of his new creation fashioning life on earth. We are invited to exteriorise this belief though concrete actions. The declaration – made through acts of fasting, praying and almsgiving – that God is more important to us than consumption, production and money, is eminently a spiritual statement whose natural consequence takes the form of a political stance that will be actuated by incarnating the Gospel in the socio-economic-cultural structures of current society.
Lent, thus, provides us with a three-pronged subversive attack that should lead towards a more just society. Lent is the period where Christians re-examine themselves and the society in which they live. It is the time to regroup to launch an attack against the worshiping on the altar of this three-headed contemporary version of the Lernaean Hydra and the religion of the throwaway society.
This can only be done if we do not take Anka’s option, but like Fitzpatrick, although for a different reason, open the envelope that will help us see ourselves and society as they really are. It is only then that we can move to build a better us and thus a better world.
Perhaps Anka would have been happier had she opened the envelope.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt