A Gift of Forty Days

Lent comes to us this year as the very thing that we need: a gift.  On Ash Wednesday, God offered us the sure knowledge of his mercy upon us and our world.  Marking us with the sign of the cross as his own, he showed us a way forward in the footsteps of his Son.  The season of Lent gives us a forty-day period to be renewed, to find God again, to let God find us.  Like the forty days of rain and flood by which God cleansed the earth of sin, like the forty days it took to embalm Jacob’s body in Egypt, like the forty days Moses spent wrapped in the cloud on the holy mountain, like the forty years the people of God journeyed through the desert to the promised land, recapitulated by Jesus in his forty days in the wilderness, so we too are offered a gift of forty days.

These days represents our whole life, beginning with God blowing the breath of life into our nostrils, and ending with a return to the dust from which we came.  Beyond this, the unimaginable promise of the fullness of life.  When St Benedict tells us that our whole life should have a Lenten character, I think this also means that during Lent, we take our life in our hands, under the symbol of forty days, and remodel it to reflect what really matters.  The three traditional ways of remodeling are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  Pope Francis, in his homily for Ash Wednesday, said that the authentic practice of these three great paths opens us to encounter with the Father, to interior freedom, and to compassion.  I would like to unpack this a little further with the help of some witnesses.

Almsgiving: letting your heart be moved

Saint Peter Chrysologus wrote eloquently of the inseparable link between prayer, fasting, and almsgiving:
“Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.  Fasting is the soul of prayer, almsgiving is the lifeblood of fasting.  Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing.  So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.  When you fast, see the fasting of others.  If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry.  If you hope for mercy, show mercy.  If you look for kindness, show kindness.  If you want to receive, give.  If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.”

Bishop Erik Varden noted in a recent interview that the word “alms” is derived from the Greek word eleemosune – to show mercy.  He went on to say:
“A crucial aspect of almsgiving is hollowing out that capacity for mercy in myself and touching that vulnerable core where my heart is touched in compassion by the need and the misery of others” …to “allow my capacity for compassion to defreeze.” (Bishop Erik Varden, OCSO)

Our minds and hearts may follow the miseries of our world, but we must act locally.  Starting here, now, what can I do?  How can I show mercy?  How can I make life a little bit better for those around me?  Can I lift someone’s burden, bind up a wound, support the troubled, or offer a word of consolation?  It is worth noticing that Chapter 4 of the Rule is an intricately woven web of prayer, fasting and mercy – acts that may not have a direct impact on the world outside, but which are seen in secret and accepted by him who is the Father of all.

Fasting: not to pamper yourself

In his Rule, St Benedict invites us to take Lent as an opportunity to add a little something to the usual measure of our service of the Lord.  “Let him withhold from his body some food, some drink, some sleep, some chat, some ribaldry…” (RB 49.7).  So, no boisterous laughter?  No horseplay?  No fun?  But I think Benedict’s intent is not to establish a harsh and humorless environment.  What he is proposing is a practical means to get serious about the serious things of life.  To sober up.  To refrain from misusing material and social pleasures as a way of numbing ourselves from our own misery and the misery of others.

The verse from the Rule that sums this up for me is: “Do not pamper yourself” (RB 4.12).  We could add to St Benedict’s list any number of ways of pampering ourselves that are more hidden, more insidious than indulgence in food, drink, sleep, or fun.  I may pamper myself by seeking superficial compensations for the things I have given up or for the unfortunate things that have befallen me.  “I deserve at least this.”  “No one can deny me that.”  By feathering my nest or padding my corner, I am well prepared, so that when scarcity knocks, I, at least, will be comfortable, protected, safe from harm.  I may pamper myself by finding ways to get my own way, no matter what, to exert control over my small world and the people who inhabit it, even to the extent of demeaning or exploiting the other for my advantage.  I may pamper myself by seeking the moral high ground, by building an unassailable ivory tower of virtue from which I can look down on others, pointing the finger at them in blame.

The danger in all this is that my heart becomes as small as the things I grasp onto, trying to fill it.  I am closed in on myself and insensible to compassion, to mercy, unreachable even by God.  It is in secret that we make the choice to pamper ourselves or not.  No-one may see it; no-one may call us on it.  As with Jesus tempted by the devil in the wilderness, only the Father who sees in secret will know whether we choose the path of captivity or of freedom.

Prayer: dwelling under God’s gaze

In his Circular Letter for Lent, Dom Mauro-Giuseppe, O.Cist. ponders the time St Benedict spent in the cave of Subiaco before he began to form monastic communities.  The word St Gregory uses to describe this phase of his life is habitare secum – Benedict “dwelt with himself…seeing himself always before the eyes of the Creator” (Dialogues 2.3).  Dom Mauro says that his face became a reflection of God’s good gaze, somewhat like Moses’ shining face.  This experience must have been the source of his call to open our eyes to the deifying light, which is the first step of humility.  It echoes, too, at the end of his life, when he saw the whole world lit up by a single ray of light.  He could look truthfully on himself, on others, on the whole world and see what God sees.

In the presence of God – the real God who transcends me utterly and draws nearer to me than I am to myself – I am made aware of my own misery, my state of brokenness, my sin.  Choosing to live my human condition under the gaze of God opens me to the tragedies which befall other people.  My own struggle against sin places me side-by-side with those guilty of the greatest evils in our world.  Simply to bear my wounds and live my struggles with authenticity can be a way of solidarity with all who suffer and who sin.  Allowing myself to be seen as I am by God, to be loved by him, to be healed by him, is far from a selfish act.  In this sense, prayer is a being held and a holding simultaneously.  This, too, can be my secret offering, seen only by the Father.

May each of us accept this gift of forty days to dwell under the gaze of God, to grow in interior freedom and in compassion.  If any of you, having identified in the light of grace what it is that needs to change in your life, have committed yourself to some concrete means of addressing this, whether through prayer or fasting or mercy or all three rolled into one; if you would like to share this with me, I would be honored to give a blessing.

Sources:
Pope Francis, Homily for Ash Wednesday
Bishop Erik Varden, OCSO, Interview with the Pillar
Dom Mauro-Giuseppe Lepori, OCist, Letter for Lent