The True Meaning of Lent
by Fr. Roger Landry - February 26, 2010
The richness, depth and clarity of the homilies and catecheses Pope Benedict has given during his first five years as the successor of St. Peter have provoked several experts in Church history to start comparing them to the works of the greatest Fathers of the early Church. There's a growing chorus that is predicting that in future centuries, his words will be studied and read right alongside those of Saints John Chrysostom, Augustine, and Leo the Great. More and more Catholics are beginning to become aware of this great spiritual treasure available to them and to subscribe to free email services like zenit.org to receive the Pope's words each day and take them to their prayer.
On Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict gave a catechesis on the real meaning of Lent that bore all the traits for which his discourses have quickly become renown. As we mark the tenth day of this holy season, it would be worthwhile to ponder what he said. We can break down his insights into four parts.
The first is that Lent is not meant to be primarily an individual journey of self-discipline, sacrifice, and personal prayer. It is an ecclesial pilgrimage. "We are not alone in this spiritual itinerary," Pope Benedict clarified, "because the Church accompanies and sustains us from the start with the Word of God, which encloses a program of spiritual life and penitential commitment, and with the grace of the sacraments." Lent is not a solitary hike from a dark valley up a high spiritual mountain, but a journey together with the whole Church in which God's word and very life in the sacraments guide, strengthen and sustain us all. The Pope is calling us all to rediscover this communal dimension of Lent — in families, parishes, dioceses and beyond.
Second, the conversion asked of us in Lent is not something small, but radical and total. Commenting on Jesus' words, "Repent and believe in the Gospel," which constitute one of the two formulae used for the imposition of ashes, the Holy Father said that they call us to "conversion, a word that must be taken in its extraordinary seriousness." In many places, he said, conversion is not treated with sufficient gravity, being viewed as something minor rather than major. "The call to conversion, in fact, uncovers and denounces the easy superficiality that very often characterizes our way of living." In a passage that deserves to be read slowly and contemplated prayerfully, he specified what conversion really entails:
"To be converted means to change direction along the way of life — not for a slight adjustment, but a true and total change of direction. Conversion is to go against the current, where the 'current' is a superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and illusory, which often draws us, controls us and makes us slaves of evil, or in any case prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, instead, one aims to the lofty measure of Christian life; we are entrusted to the living and personal Gospel, which is Christ Jesus. His person is the final goal and the profound meaning of conversion; he is the way which we are called to follow in life, allowing ourselves to be illumined by his light and sustained by his strength that moves our steps. In this way conversion manifests its most splendid and fascinating face: It is not a simple moral decision to rectify our conduct of life, but it is a decision of faith, which involves us wholly in profound communion with the living and concrete person of Jesus. Conversion is the total 'yes' of the one who gives his own existence to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ, who first offered himself to man as Way, Truth and Life, as the one who frees and saves him."
So the Lenten conversion asked of us, the Pope stressed, is an exodus from the slavery of moral mediocrity to the high Christian standard of sanctity, defined as a faith-filled decision to seek to live wholly in communion with Jesus in all aspects of our life.
Benedict's words call to mind his predecessor's Pastoral Plan for the New Millennium, where Pope John Paul II wrote, "Since Baptism is a true entry into the holiness of God through incorporation into Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit, it would be a contradiction to settle for a life of mediocrity, marked by a minimalist ethic and a shallow religiosity. To ask catechumens: 'Do you wish to receive Baptism?' means at the same time to ask them: 'Do you wish to become holy?' It means to set before them the radical nature of the Sermon on the Mount: 'Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect' (Mt 5:48). The time has come to re-propose wholeheartedly to everyone this high standard of ordinary Christian living: the whole life of the Christian community and of Christian families must lead in this direction. It is also clear, however, that the paths to holiness are personal and call for a genuine 'training in holiness,' adapted to people's needs."
Lent is precisely a time in which this "high standard of ordinary Christian living" is re-proposed and the "genuine training in holiness" is meant to take place. This is what Pope Benedict on Ash Wednesday was calling the whole Church to recommence.
The Holy Father's third insight was that this process of conversion from mediocrity to transforming communion with Christ is not a one-time event, but a continual process and way of life. Repenting and believing in Christ the Gospel incarnate does not happen "only at the beginning of the Christian life," he stated, "but accompanies all its steps. Every day is a favorable moment of grace, because each day invites us to give ourselves to Jesus, to have confidence in him, to remain in him, to share his style of life, to learn from him true love, to follow him in daily fulfilling of the will of the Father, the only great law of life -- every day, even when difficulties and toil, exhaustion and falls are not lacking, even when we are tempted to abandon the following of Christ and to shut ourselves in ourselves, in our egoism, without realizing the need we have to open to the love of God in Christ, to live the same logic of justice and love." Every day is part of our training in holiness, our turning away from sin and embracing Christ.
Finally, the Pope said that this process of continual conversion is meant to lead to nothing less than our death and rebirth within the death and resurrection of Christ himself. The second formula for the imposition of ashes, "Remember, man, that you are dust and unto dust you shall return," the Pope declared, "reminds us of our frailty, including our death, which is the extreme expression of our frailty. In face of the innate fear of the end, the Lenten liturgy on one hand reminds us of death, inviting us to realism and to wisdom, but on the other hand, it drives us above all to accept and live the unexpected novelty that the Christian faith liberates us from the reality of death itself." The way that liberation occurs is in the passage from the "old Adam," who returned to the dust from which he came, to the "new Adam," Christ Jesus. Lent, therefore, is the time for a "more conscious and more intense immersion in the Paschal Mystery of Christ, in his death and resurrection, through participation in the Eucharist and in the life of charity, which stems from the Eucharist and in which it finds its fulfillment. With the imposition of ashes we renew our commitment to follow Jesus, to allow ourselves to be transformed by his Paschal Mystery, to overcome evil and do good, to have the 'old man' in us die, the one linked to sin, and to have the 'new man' be born, transformed by the grace of God."
This is the deepest way of all in which the season of Lent is meant to lead us to experience the full joy of Easter.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
