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[nun-cents]

Sandra O. Smithson, OSF

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Lenten Thoughts

Each year, many Christians approach Easter by walking through the desert season of Lent, searching in small ways for that death to self that will allow us to finally transform our lives into images of the resurrected Lord, only to discover in celebrations of His triumph over death that little, in fact, in us has changed. Yet we remain faithful to the practice, to the yearly renewal of fasting and abstinence and rituals, of sermon and song, of liturgy and sacrament — all made sacred by His Resurrected Presence. Yet, why does His gift of so much yield so little in us? Why does not His final triumph over death buttress forever our faltering steps toward resurrection?

During the moments of high feasts and solemn celebrations, we are like the Apostles on the Mount of the Transfiguration. Caught up in the dazzling splendor of the moment, we come to know how good it is to be here, and we are ready to construct whatever is needed for His glory as we hear the voice of God from the deep well of our inner being, momentarily surrendered, saying “This is My Beloved Son.” But then, the music dies, the voices fall silent, and there it ends. The cloud of our own fallible and faltering reality returns; our persistent compulsions, our petty pursuits, our puffed up egos. Like Peter, James, and John, we lift up our eyes, but unlike these Apostles, we never quite reach their final wisdom of seeing “no one but Jesus only.” And because we never quite reach that point, we remain in that risky, shadowy world where we hardly see Jesus at all. We remain active in a world busy constructing handmade temples in which we dedicate altars to the wrong prophets, and on which are offered sacrifices that cannot save.

Year after year, we raise the same question, penned so long ago by the Prophet Isaiah, “Why do we fast, and You, Lord, do not see it? Why do we afflict ourselves and You take no note?” For today, we see our nation in a state of serious and pervasive decline. True, as a people or a collection of peoples, we have never fully embraced the Judeo-Christian values that were the foundation stones of our institutions and the spiritual rhetoric of our founding fathers. We have never really been one nation, nor have we ever functioned as a people “whose God is the Lord.” We have a bloody history to attest to that reality: the genocide of the first American; the dehumanization of Black Americans, enslaved, oppressed, exploited, raped, and murdered; the systematic abuse of the weak; the capitalistic exploitation of the poor. We made it clear from the beginning where our values lay. We coined the phrase “In God We Trust,” then ended up printing it on our money.

Yet, though we came, as the poet James Weldon Johnson wrote, “over a way that with tears has been watered … treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,” we were still a nation of promise, because, despite our failures, we somehow continued to struggle toward the spiritual ideals of justice and mercy, toward the pragmatic ideals of industry, discipline, hard work and the kind of creativity in the arts that nourish the noblest instincts in our otherwise depraved humanity, always on the verge of going astray.

But today, it is as if most of us have lost the energy to struggle against the downward pull of those forces in us that are most base and unredeemed. The wonderful constitution of our land that gave us the freedom to become all that we could be is now used as the document that gives us the license to be nothing at all. The freedom of religion that our ancestors sought to guarantee by writing it into law has now been twisted into a guarantee of freedom from religion. The freedom of speech that was meant to be a protection against the corrosion of individual human rights by oppressive government is now used to allow the propagation of pornography, slander, and hatred; to protect hate groups while they create a kind of terror that intimidates the weak and the vulnerable; and to promote a salacious environment that destroys the consciences of our children. We glory in the billions we spend on wars to protect other nations, and argue and fight over the pennies we give in taxes toward the care of our own poor and needy. We hold our elderly like prisoners in their homes and send our children daily into dangerous battlegrounds that we call schools. We have finally created a nation in which nothing is sacred and no one is safe.

So those of us who call ourselves religious people, who yearly prepare ourselves for the Lenten fast, for the little “dyings” through which we hope to reap the resurrection of us all, we ask again: “Why Lord, do we fast, and You do not see it? Why do we afflict ourselves and You take no note? And year after year, we hear but do not heed the answer, “In the day of your fast, your own will is found. You continue to busy yourself with your vain pursuits, driving your laborers unnecessarily, quarreling and fighting, striking others down. Would this time, you would finally fast so as to make your voice heard on high. Why do you think your manner of fasting is important to Me, the God of all Creation, the God who made human beings so that they may reflect My glory, My goodness and My love? Why do you think it could mean anything to Me that you bow your head like a reed, that you sign your forehead with ashes, that you cut back a little on the otherwise ample portions of rich fare that customarily grace your tables? Do yo call that a fast, a day acceptable to Me, your Lord? This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: Release those bound unjustly; untie the thongs of the yoke; set the oppressed free; break every yoke; share your food with the hungry; shelter the oppressed, the abused, the homeless; clothe the naked when you see them; and do not turn your back on your own flesh [no matter the color, the class, the culture, the nationality, the condition]. Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed. Your vindication shall go before you, and the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer. You shall cry for help and He will say: Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:3-9