Dear Friends,
Welcome to Lent! Your ashes may be washed off, but your Lenten Journey lasts forty days.
I trust that those of you who took the time to join us on the Lenten Retreat with Immaculee Ilibagiza found it to be spiritually rewarding and gave you better insights into our faith journey with Jesus. The same with those of you who are joining us every week to watch The Chosen together via Zoom. The Chosen is such a powerful portrayal of what discipleship would have looked like among those first followers of Jesus. I think I have been brought to tears with every episode. I know it has given me new insights as to how each of the disciples might have responded to the call from Jesus and his challenge to join in the proclamation of the Kingdom. Even if you have not joined us before, know that you are more than welcome!
The period of Lent extends from Ash Wednesday to Easter. While on the calendar this period lasts 46 days, Lent only officially lasts 40 days since Sundays are not included in the Catholic tradition. All Sundays are essentially “mini Easters” and are exempt from fasting, introspection, and repentance.
You may recall that Lent began from a request from those who had joined the church through a long catechumenate process. They wanted to have a chance to repeat the most intense times of that process. The Church then chose the 40 days of Lent as symbolic of the 40 days spent by Christ in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. Other instances of 40 days in Scripture include those Moses spent on Mount Sinai, the days and nights of rain during Noah’s flood, the 40 days Elijah walked to Mount Horeb, and the 40 years the Hebrews spent wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land.
As I wrote about last week in this space, Lent is a time of self-denial, a time of fasting. Some of you may have chosen to fast from what has become the great time waster and distraction instrument of our age – social media. As you create space by fasting from social media with what are you filling the time? I suppose you could fill it with prayer. However, since recent studies say that the average person is on some form of social media for two and half hours a day, I would guess you are not going to spend that much time in daily prayer.
May I suggest you use the time to reconnect with friends or read a great book. Even novels can be a good spiritual read if they have a good Christian core. You might read one of the novels of Flannery O’Conner or Frederick Buechner or C.S. Lewis or Tolstoy or Nathaniel Hawthorne. If you like poetry, you could try Gerard Manley Hopkins or Paul Mariani or Jeanne Murray Walker or Seamus Heaney. Or if giving up the phone is too difficult for you, then listen to podcasts that deal with scripture or our faith journey. Or, go to Formed.org and watch one of their movies or presentations. This is a free resource to our parishioners since we purchase a yearly subscription as a parish.
This Lent, I am spending the first two weeks on a journey with friends to Patagonia in the southern reaches of Argentina and Chile. This will be primarily a wilderness experience with lots of walks through the mountains of the area. I would not normally leave during this time of year but since Patagonia is in the southern reaches of our planet, they are experiencing early fall weather now just as we are experiencing early spring here. Winters are very harsh in Patagonia and travel is limited to a couple months of the year. You will certainly be in my prayers each day. I imagine I will have lots of time for reflection and prayer as I walk the long hikes around glacial lakes and up the mountainsides. Please keep me in your prayers too.
Peace,
Fr. Damian