Second Sunday of Lent

Last week I received a message from an abbot of our order, which he closed with the salutation: precious Lent.  I was touched by this, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I feel the fittingness of it.  Precious Lent.
 
As St Benedict conceives of it, Lent is such a precious gift that it would be desirable to extend it to our whole life.  Our whole life should be given to the process of being purified and simplified and brought to a single desire.  Our whole life should be a falling back into the arms of God’s mercy.  Our whole life should have the character of an expectant waiting for the joy of Easter.  But we know that our human nature does not lend itself to such continual and unwavering firmness of purpose.  Sometimes we enjoy much zeal and energy and clarity; at other times we grow tired, fall ill, and lack the energy for forward movement; at still other times we are threatened by afflictions of one kind or another, that smother our growth like weeds.  We are cyclic beings, whose inner condition is in constant change and alternation, much as in the outer world, seasons change and alternate.  I recently learned that the English word Lent is a shortened form of the Old English word lencten, meaning “spring season” – the time for new growth.
 
A few years ago, our retreat director, a Benedictine monk, described the annual community retreat as “an extra dish” – the main dish being the observance of Lent.  The purpose of a retreat is to give opportunity for a return to our first love, to the original fire of our self-dedication to God.  Now is the acceptable time for a fresh start, for re-consecration, to take up again the tools of our monastic life – fasting, prayer, reading, silence and mutual service – with new attention and hope.  What makes Lent so precious is that it offers the chance to be reminded of the preciousness of our whole life as a journey toward God.
 
The simplicity of the Lenten desert makes way for the experience of the holy, as we see in today’s transfiguration gospel.  Similarly, the simplicity of the landscape these days makes it possible to notice the emergence of a delicate new flower.  Early Spring is not photogenic, because its beauty is subtle.  Those clumps of crocuses and snowdrops make up tiny oases in the midst of the great expanse of grey/brown wilderness we have been looking at for two months and more.  This year, the snow did not come to cover over the earth’s nakedness, camouflaging its deathlike phase with glorious white.  Whether we have stopped to think about it or not, our eyes have been thirsting for color and life, our souls for the hope that beauty brings.  The quiet joy we feel when we walk past the cloister windows and see new flowers popping up comes from the simple recognition that, yes, another winter has come and gone, and the flowers once again appear on the earth.
 
Perhaps a voice in our heart is singing, softly:
“Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come!” (Sg 2:13)
Arise from the bare earth, like these flowers, through the detritus of your distractions, and bask in the sunlight of my love.  Become beautiful under my gaze and come, come away from all that binds you, whether anger or sadness or anxiety.  Because the death of winter always, always gives way to new life.
 
I am struck by the words the gospel uses at the close of the account of the transfiguration: “And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone” (Mt 17:8).  Jesus, alone.  After the glory of his shining face and clothing white as light, from which they must avert their eyes, the vision passes, and they see Jesus alone.  It is worth remembering that the disciples lived with Jesus day in and day out, yet only at certain moments did they see his glory.  These moments are recorded as theophanies and evoke a response of holy fear: the miraculous catch of fish, the stilling of the storm.  But what about the rest of the time?  I imagine there were ordinary moments too, and plenty of them.  What about when Jesus was eating an apple or tying his shoelace or brushing his teeth?  He was still God at those obscure moments, no less than when he dazzled them.  In our lives too, there are occasional moments of theophany, in which the palpable presence of divinity causes us to fall on our faces.  And then in between, there are many, many ordinary moments, in which nothing special seems to be happening.  Do we raise our eyes and see Jesus, alone?
 
Being able to see the holy in daily life is a matter of cultivating a taste for it.  In Lent we are invited to clean our palates for the taste of holiness, just as the long barrenness of winter prepares us to delight in the smallest flower.  To appreciate the holiness latent in a simple task or an everyday encounter requires that we renounce the temptation we all face to fill ourselves up with productivity and the completion of tasks.  Today’s culture is characterized more and more by overstimulation and hyperactivity.  Simply to be and to receive God’s quiet presence in our lives: this is the great challenge and the opportunity of Lent.

Our community experience of sickness this week has offered a particular flavor to the Lenten grace.  We have been obliged to recognize our weakness, our vulnerability, the need to have mercy on one another and on ourselves.  Many of us have been isolated for a day or more, restricted to the simple desert of a single room and unable to take anything but the bread of God’s word.  In this we have been offered a clear experience of solidarity with all those who are sick in our days, as well as those in the enforced solitude and inactivity of quarantine.  My prayer in these days is that everything that befalls us and our world will only make us more attuned to God’s holiness manifest in our midst, like a Spring flower emerging from the bare earth.
 
A precious Lent to you.