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March 2004 |
Restoring the relevancy of Lent
I've often wondered how many Christians approach the season of Lent with a truly penitent spirit -- beyond the liturgical prayers of confession and their corporate anonymity -- prayers, where one confesses everything generally but nothing specifically. When the words spoken are perceived to be about others' shortcomings and not one's own! Lent, as a season of corporate confession that never becomes personal, really misses the healing balm Lent offers.
Perhaps it's because today's mores may be creating a "guiltless" society and "guiltless" individuals; the concept and the "reality" of wrong fading away.
Even an admission of "wrongdoing" or "misconduct" absent a sense of shame or guilt when the "rules" change such, that wrong, misconduct, or misbehavior lose their meaning.
There are even those who maintain a sense of guilt is psychologically "unhealthy" and should be avoided or perhaps "counseled" away!
Or one might delude oneself, thus denying the reality or fact - that an event actually ever occurred. "It," whatever "it" represents, simply never happened. Thus there is no reason or need to "feel" remorse or to be responsible for one's words or deeds.
It could be this whole business about "right" and "wrong" has simply lost its usefulness in a modern society; a carryover from a less sophisticated and enlightened age. As someone put it, "an old, tired morality," or was it "a tired, old morality"?
What then does the Christian do with Lent to make it utterly personal?
Each year I gather clergy from across the Episcopal Area to a Pre-Lenten and Ash Wednesday Service. These words are offered to the gathered pastors:
"I invite you … in the name of the Church, to observe a holy Lent:
to self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial and by reading and meditating on God's Holy Word.
To make a right beginning of repentance, …"
I assume clergy in their congregations invite parishioners to this same Lenten observance. It is a time of confession and repentance of - here it goes - wrongdoing, misdeed, misconduct, dare I say it - SIN - of omission and commission. What one should not have done, but did; and what one should have done but did not!
Does the invitation fall on deaf ears, or worse offered by one who no longer believes the invitation?
Could it be the confession and repentance aspect of Lent have become altogether irrelevant? For some!
Not all, however. There are yet those who in shame, even fear and trembling, with a sense of guilt offer to God every soiled deed, every hurtful thought or act.
And cry out:
"We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word and deed.
"We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us."
Reminded and reassured by a loving God and a Risen Savior, the guilt-relieving words are welcomed - "Your sins are forgiven!" And the burden of guilt, which bore so heavily, is lifted and the soul is able to face yet another day and another challenge.
Perhaps Lent is not so irrelevant after all for confession and forgiveness heals us and makes us whole.
Woodie W. White
Last updated on 03/05/2004