By Sister Beatrice Ste. Marie, SSND
Lent Part I: Penance
As I engage in Lent this year, I find myself asking: “What is different? What can be different?”
Certainly at 83 - and now living in Assisted Living - it must be a new season for me.
I still hear the ancient call to “Return to me with all your heart.” I also hear the invitation to do Penance. But I am more and more aware that it is different.
Gone are the days when I struggled to decide whether to give up desserts or just candy or my favorite TV show.
Then, I couldn’t wait for Easter to get them back again!
Gone also are the days when I focused on increasing prayer or religious practices, like the Stations, or reading Scripture, or even volunteering some place. Those, too, seemed to wane as the Lenten season ended.
Now, in this new season of my life, I am turning away from giving up, or even doing some things, and find the invitation----- to let go graciously.
Letting go is nothing new to me for some time now. My body and my life ministry have been a series of letting go. Sometimes they have been smothered in sadness, frustration, or even anger.
I read recently that the cross is embedded into the human experience.
So, I have been reflecting on a new sense of Penance, one that is just embracing what is. To look at the “letting go” of my life as an invitation to graciously accept what is.
Lent Part II: Incarnation
The other part of my reflection has been the call to embrace more fully the Incarnation, not as a onetime act of God, but as a continuing reality.
In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, the Apostles get a glimpse of the divinity of Jesus. But note how quickly Jesus leads his friends back down from the mountain to the reality of everyday living.
Jesus’ embrace of our human nature was a profound movement of God to engage in our human experience totally.
Jesus, too, had his younger season, his ministry season and his season of letting go.
He walked, preached, and prayed. He fell asleep in the midst of a storm. He needed friends to assist him in His ministry, and celebrated the joys of life and nature.
Jesus reached out in compassion to the widow, the disabled, and the outcast. He was tempted, encountered lack of understanding, and challenged by the powers that be.
He felt the pain of denial, betrayal, and abandonment. And he forgave!
These human experiences were part of the life of Jesus, the Incarnate One. He continues to experience them in each one of us.
Walking side by side with Jesus during this season of Lent is a challenge today.
Everywhere we look we see suffering, rejection, pain and fear. In each person, somehow, the Incarnate One continues to experience the human condition.
Can I - in some small - way reach out to someone to touch their pain and let them know that someone cares; that God cares? Can this make a difference in how I engage in Lent?
Can we hold in prayer the refugee, the immigrant, those suffering from the ravages of war or oppression? Can this be our prayer focus during Lent? In each one, the Incarnate One continues to experience our humanness.
Dwelling within us with the Spirit, Jesus gives us the grace to let go of what we need to let go of during Lent, not to get it back at Easter, but to prepare us for the new life of Easter and resurrection.
