LENT - OUR HEALING JOURNEY

YOUR life can be different . . .
if you want it to be!

by Bishop David Chislett SSC

At least since the twelfth century, LENT has been described as the HEALING TIME of the Church's year - a time for us to look carefully at our lives, and work out where we really are in our relationship with God.

We have to admit that our capacity for self-deception - even in (perhaps especially in) the spiritual life - is limitless. That’s why holy mother Church shoves us into this period of facing up to reality. She knows that reflection and diagnosis are the necessary prelude to a new healing encounter with Jesus.

There are mysterious stretches of spiritual dryness in the Christian life, seemingly unconnected to any particular fault or sin on our part. All the saints down through the ages struggled during these times just to "hang in there," trusting the wonderful promises God gives us in his Word. We must do the same, supported by the love of our brothers and sisters in Christ, and strengthened by the grace of God in the sacraments. You know the saying: "When the train goes into the tunnel, the safest thing to do is to stay on the train!"

ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY
Having recognised that, you and I must be honest enough to admit that most of the time our spiritual, emotional and psychological problems are a direct result of our relationship with God becoming dysfunctional.

In our other relationships, the causes of dysfunctionality are complex, and, as a rule, both parties are at fault. Hence the need for clever counsellors and psychologists to help us work out why things are as they are.

However, one thing we can be certain about when looking at dysfunctionality in our relationship with God is that God is never at fault. He has loved us with an everlasting love. He sacrificed everything to redeem us in Christ. He made us his people and gave the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. He speaks to us in the Bible, and he comes to us in the miracle of Holy Communion.

He has given himself - and goes on giving himself - so completely to us. WE must accept the responsibility for any dysfunctionality in our relationship with him.

There are at least two ways in which our relationship with God becomes dysfunctional.

The first is when we deliberately ignore what God says in the Scriptures in order to run our own lives. Now, we all struggle to bring the various aspects of our lives into conformity with the will of God. The point I'm making is we cannot deliberately shut God out of areas of our life and expect our overall relationship with him to survive - any more than we could do that in a friendship or a marriage. When we decide that we can run our lives better than God can, we do shut him out, and the end result is that instead of the "life in all its fulness" (John 10:10) his love offers us, we live in a loveless hell of our own making.

The second way our relationship with God becomes dysfunctional also happens in ordinary relationships. It’s when we are so self absorbed, so preoccupied with what we are doing, so busy fulfilling our ambitions and goals, that we just drift from God without meaning to. This seems fairly innocuous, but the end result is the same.

SPIRITUAL PARALYSIS
On the Second Sunday of Lent in the Eastern Churches, the Gospel of Jesus healing the paralysed man is read (Mark 2:1-12) - the man whose friends got him to Jesus by uncovering the roof and lowering him, bed and all, into the house.

The man’s physical paralysis is used in the liturgy as a symbol of our spiritual paralysis, the end result of allowing our relationship with God to remain dysfunctional.

It is also used to convey two other truths: First, that the paralysis caused by sin can only be healed by Jesus. So, it is to him we must return this Lent, if we are to know his forgiveness, his love and his healing power. Second, that like those wonderful friends who helped the paralysed man, we need to help each other get to Jesus in spite of the obstacles that might be in the way.

WHAT MATTERS MOST
LENT takes us right back to the basic question of our priorities in life. The apostle Paul tells us what mattered most of all to him in these words:

"Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own." (Philippians 3:8-12)

Notice here that while "faith" for the apostle Paul includes assent to articles of belief, it is far greater than that. It means to RELY ON or TRUST IN what God has done for us in Christ. It means our abandonment to God’s will, to the action of his love in our lives.

Let's use this Lent as a time for drawing closer to Jesus. The self denial and penitence that the Church encourages us to practice are not ends in themselves. They are meant to help us see the areas in which we have gone astray and then to re-focus our lives. Let's slow down a little, allow the suffering love of Jesus to impact upon our hearts and minds, and open ourselves afresh to the Holy Spirit. Only then will we experience the mending of our relationship with God, something that will reach its climax in the renewal of our baptismal promises at the Easter Mass.

THE GREAT RETURN
The Orthodox teacher, Father Alexander Schmemann explains the link between Lent, Easter and our baptism in these words:

"In the early Church, the main purpose of Lent was to prepare the 'catechumen', i.e. the new convert, for Baptism which was performed during the Easter liturgy. But even when the Church rarely baptized adults and the institution of the catechumenate disappeared, the basic meaning of Lent remained the same. For, even though we are baptized, what we constantly lose and betray is precisely that which we received at Baptism.

"Therefore Easter is our return every year to our own Baptism, whereas Lent is our preparation for that return - the slow and sustained effort to perform, at the end, our own 'passage' or 'pascha' into the new life in Christ. If, as we shall see, Lenten worship preserves even today its catechetical and baptismal character, it is not as 'archaeological' remains of the past, but as something valid and essential for us. For each year Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection."

DUST AND ASHES
LENT begins on ASH WEDNESDAY, a subdued day on which every Christian should be in church. During the Mass on that day the priest marks our foreheads with blessed ashes, saying:

"Remember O man that you are dust, and to dust you will return."

These words are from the Genesis account of our creation and fall. The ceremony reminds us of the mortality and frailty of human life. Vanity and foolish pride are silenced by that terrible formula: "to dust you will return."

We're not trying to be gloomy! We are just facing facts. In her wisdom, the Church does not pretend, or let us pretend that we do not die. During Lent the Church makes us face up to the dysfunctionality of our relationship with God, and on Ash Wednesday she forces us to come to terms with the fact of our mortality . . . that one day we will die. But she also points to what God, in his love and compassion, has done for us.

Through the sin and the gloom a light shines - the light of Jesus, who came to give us "life in all its fullness" - and the Church points to that light. The very ashes placed on our foreheads, a symbol of the dissolution and decay of our material bodies, are, in the Anglican tradition, imposed in the form of the life-giving Cross where life conquered death and love conquered hatred.

There IS a way out of the shadows - the way of the Cross and Resurrection, to which we journey during Lent.

So, dust and ashes we are . . . but not merely dust and ashes! In Jesus we partake in that new creation into which we are being transformed.

My brothers and sisters, reach out to God this Lent. There is no better time than NOW to be saved, healed, renewed and forgiven.

Published in the PATMOS REVIEW, Lent 2006