The Lent: A Retreat to the Old Rugged Cross
Though we have gone astray without being aware of our election and calling as human beings and defaced the image of God in us, in Christ, we have been given the possibility to retrieve this glory...
It is very important to take a step back from our highly competitive, fast-paced, over consuming, exhausting rat race and to take an earnest look at ourselves, pondering over the meaning and purpose of our lives.
The Lenten season provides us with an occasion to do so. The cross of Jesus Christ and the life that led him up to that cross provides us with a clear and proper perspective on what our lives and its pre-occupations ought to be.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten period leading up to the Easter. The ashes symbolize both, the nothingness of life, or the emptiness of life as well as need for repentance.
We are mere dust and ashes: “for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Gen. 3:19) The act of burning and the consequent disintegration of the body into its elements is referred to as returning to ashes.
Lenten period is a time to recognize our nothingness or emptiness and the vanity of many things that we assume would grant security and meaning to our lives. The Psalmist says: “Behold, You have made my days as handbreadths, And my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.” (Ps. 39:5) He continues, “They are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.” (Ps. 144:4) This acknowledgement of the fact that we are nothing but dust and ashes is true humility. This is also the way to wisdom; the Psalmist says: “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” (Ps. 90:12)
The fact that we are dust and ashes is only one side of the story. In Genesis, we read, “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Gen. 2:7). We also read, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Though we have gone astray without being aware of our election and calling as human beings and defaced the image of God in us, in Christ, we have been given the possibility to retrieve this glory, this image of God in us, through Jesus Christ, His Son. This reality is further elucidated in 2. Cor. 4:7, wherein it says: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
This is another aspect of our recognition as being of mere dust. In God’s unconditional love, we have been chosen as vessels of honour and that God has poured out his power and glory into our lives that we become children of God sharing in the glory of the Son. The Lenten season is an occasion to remind ourselves of God’s choice of us as God’s vessels of honour through Jesus Christ, His suffering and death on the cross.
During the Lenten season, fasting and abstinence from food, provides us with an occasion to remind ourselves that life has a meaning beyond eating, drinking and satisfying our basic needs.
While it is true that those basic needs are essential for life, we are reminded that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” (Matt. 4:4) This is often referred to as the spiritual dimension of the human self.
Human beings have a special calling to live in obedience to God and in responsibility to his fellow humanity and the world of nature to which they are inextricably bound. St Augustine’s prayer exemplifies this very aptly: “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”
We can smother this longing for an ultimate meaning and purpose in life by being busy with worldly matters and indulging in worldly pleasures, but it continues to burn in us as a smouldering fire and making us restless.
Jesus reminds the crowd that followed him after the feeding of the five thousand: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (Jn. 6: 27). ‘Food that spoils’ alludes to manna which God had given to the people of Israel in their journey through the desert. (Ex. 16: 13-21) They hoarded manna against the command of God. It bred worms and became foul; it was spoiled. ‘Food that endures for eternal life’ is the food in God’s dispensation that God provides equally to all and according to each ones need.
There is no hoarding of food in God’s dispensation. There will be caring and sharing and a deep concern for equity. During lent, we are given an occasion to remind ourselves of the vanity of our consumptive life style and what makes for an authentic and joyful life.
Moreover, it reminds us of our responsibility to earth and nature. God created us in his image so that we may represent God to the rest of creation; in other words, we are expected to act as God’s representatives and stewards to the rest of creation.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, the earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not for every man’s greed. Lenten season gives us an occasion to reflect on and repent for our exploitative attitude and over consumptive life style and our failure to be good stewards of the resources of this earth. It is in taking this responsibility for the other – our fellow human beings and nature – that we become spiritual.
The Russian philosopher, mystic and theologian, Nicolas Berdyaev, succinctly puts it: “Bread for myself is a material concern, but bread for my neighbour is a spiritual concern.” We have a responsibility to ensure that everybody else in the world has enough to satisfy their hunger. Our responsibility and concern should go beyond our self and our immediate relations to encompass all people in need and this beautiful earth, including all its flora and fauna.
Fasting and abstinence from food will not have any meaning unless there is a determined effort to reverse all exploitative, unjust, dominating and oppressive relationships. Isaiah 58: 6-9 describes the fast that is acceptable to God in the following words:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
To lose the chains of injustice
And untie the chords of the yoke,
To set the oppressed free
And break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
And to provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
When you see the naked, to clothe them,
And not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
And your healing will quickly appear.
We find Jesus Christ as the one who has taken responsibility for his fellow human beings and the rest of creation, and thereby paid the cost for it with his life. On his cross we find love in action.
On his cross we find reflected the terrible consequences of our sins; what they have done to the one who came to give us life and life abundant; how we have forfeited our great inheritance as God’s own children. But, on the cross we also find the outstretched arms that are always ready to embrace a ‘wretch like me’. And on his resurrection, we are given the hope and promise of a new life, a new creation, ‘a new heaven and a new earth’.
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Therefore, let us make this Lenten season an occasion for awakening the ‘spirit’ within us and set it aflame so that from our life there would flow greater light and life to the world around. May we, thus, experience the power of his resurrection in our life and be agents of that power to a world subjected to decay under the power of sin.