Last Wednesday, ashes were place on our heads, a sign of penance dating back to Old Testament tradition. Hence its liturgical name: Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.
Pope Francis has asked the Christian faithful to live this period with the loving mercy God has for all of us. He has asked God’s people to concentrate on His mercy in our lives and to focus on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
And so it ought to be. However, this requires us to connect our daily lives with an important stage of God’s mercy toward humanity. It is unfortunate that there seems to be a chasm between the days of Lent and the Easter Triduum. And still a greater chasm between season of Lent and the other days and seasons of both the liturgical and civil year.
St Paul asked St Timothy to “preach the word; [to] be prepared in season and out of season”.
Some might argue that putting restraint on these popular religious expressions can put people off the Church. But it is other things that have really put people off: the clergy’s abuse and arrogance, a widespread hedonistic mindset, and a culture that facilitates gambling, promiscuity and corruption
In other words, Paul insists on consistency. He then gives the reasons for this insistence: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn to myths. But keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge the duties of your ministry.”
In his book The Mystical Way in Everyday Life, the great 20th century theologian Karl Rahner shows that life still goes on during Lent, but he believed that every day is filled with endless opportunities for mystical encounters with God:
“Then [the theology of everyday life] is exactly what it is meant to be for the Christian: the place of faith, the school of matter-of-factness, the exercise of patience, the quiet possibility to love truly and faithfully, the space for objectivity, which is the seed of ultimate wisdom.”
Rahner’s words bring to mind the words of another great theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar: “In contemplation, therefore, we have found the link which joins the two halves of Christian existence – the ‘work of God’ in the realm of the Church and the work of man in the everyday world – into a firm unity. Contemplation binds the two together in a single liturgy which is both sacred and secular, ecclesial and cosmic.”
The consistency that Paul preached about required people to be honest, at least, with themselves. In our country, Good Friday and Easter Sunday were (and I mean ‘were’) celebrated by means of a religious processions. Isn’t it paradoxical that concomitant with the penetration of secularisation and secular mores, these processions have been turned into an exercise in pageantry, which have almost nothing liturgical about them? What we see is not popular religiosity but fake religiosity and staged-authenticity. So Christ is separated from his body. This is not a condemnation but an analysis.
Some might argue that putting restraint on these popular religious expressions can put people off the Church. But it is other things that have really put people off the Church: the clergy’s abuse and arrogance of different hues, a widespread hedonistic mindset, and a culture that facilitates gambling, promiscuity, corruption, and so on.
There are those who never tire of embellishing the temple and adding more statues, but wouldn’t it be more pastorally fruitful if one were to stop and meditate on that moment when Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers who were buying and selling – following a custom that hardly any priest challenged – and drove them out of the temple? It is interesting that immediately afterwards Luke says: “Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him”.
Lent is the appropriate liturgical season to fall on our knees and cry: Lord have mercy on us, and to start our metanoia – our change of heart.
joe.inguanez@gmail.com
Fr Joe Inguanez, a sociologist, is executive director of Discern.