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Lent Spurs Us On

Lent invites us to pause and look honestly at our lives. It is a sacred season to turn away from sin, renew our hearts, and draw closer to God through prayer, fasting, and acts of love. So, as a believer, Lent spurs us on to self-examination and a spirit of renewal in our walk with God.

Scripture reminds us:

  • Matthew 24:13 – “The one who endures to the end will be saved.”
  • 2 Peter 1:3-4 – “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.”
  • Isaiah 43:18-21 – “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert… for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.”
  • 2 Corinthians 4:17 – “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”Proverbs 15:19 – “The way of the lazy is overgrown with thorns, but the path of the upright is a level highway.”

When we disentangle from ‘the lent is for harshness’ and remember that lent is a time when we ponder being plunged into God’s forgiveness, God’s patience, God’s unremitting love, God’s true intention in giving us life and breath, purpose and meaning. Shifting our understanding of Lent encourages us to unburden ourselves from what holds us back from what God desires for us and frees us fro make us more deliberate in choosing what will take us to the richer life that God intends for us. God allows us to see the betrayal, indifference, hesitation and fear that led to Jesus’ passion death and resurrection, and brings us to a new way of seeing.  In moving from our old way to a committed and vibrant faith we are surprised to discover spiritual practice is not heavy and miserable.  Quite the opposite, it is rewarding and enlivening, moving us from the loneliness we’ve been trying to resolve by escapism and entertainments, into a sense of belonging to the Body of Christ that brings us to find ourselves connected through God to a much larger dynamic.  Holiness is not deprivation but enrichment.  Living in and for God is not sitting ourselves off from happiness but coming to live in a spiritual joy that completes and fulfills us.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux tells us:

“Let the eyes fast from curiosity. 

Let the ears fast in not heeding vain words or anything unnecessary for the soul’s salvation.

Let the tongue fast from defamation and gossip, from vain and useless words.

Let the hand fast from idleness and unnecessary busyness.

Let the soul fast even more from all vices and sins, and from imposing its will and judgments. 

For without such fasting, all other fasting is rejected by God.”

(From a Lenten sermon by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Cistercian abbot, 12th century)