Homily for First Sunday of Lent
Lent still finds an echo with most people in Ireland. That was very obvious from the crowds who frequented the church here on Wednesday last. And not just for Mass. They dropped in, in great numbers, throughout the day. Lent is still a cultural event in Ireland. Many people still like to 'give up something' for Lent. In the early 1980s, some of our theologians tended to look down upon these sporadic outbursts of asceticism. It smacked of salvation by good works rather than by faith. Fortunately, perhaps, the man who gives up the pint for Lent will not be that familiar with the loftier thoughts of these theologians. So this popular practice persists and is quite common.
Perhaps we should pay more attention to popular culture, to such traditional practices as giving up something for Lent. What are people trying to say through this, what deep spiritual needs are not being met in church liturgy and worship. It is a pity that we so often think of Lent as a time when we merely try to make ourselves uncomfortable. It is a time when divisions within our own souls come to the fore, when the Pharisee within looks down upon our despised inner publican. Lent is the time when we are invited to think of Jesus in the wilderness. But the wilderness belongs to us. It is always lurking somewhere as part of our experience, and there are times when it seems to be pretty much the whole of our experience. Our wilderness then is an inner isolation. It's an absence of contact. It's a sense of being alone, in some cases terrifyingly alone. Often we try to alleviate that loneliness through gossip, drink, religion, sex, gambling or possibly a combination of all five elements. This isolation, this lack of communion, is at the heart of the Lenten experience. This sense of isolation has nothing to do with the physical realities of human contact or lack of same. It is an inner experience, and it is it is very much part of contemporary experience, and intensely so. Jesus Christ offers his followers full communion. But this full communion will not be accomplished by avoiding or denying the desert. It will be accomplished only through embracing the desert, or, as we say today, through 'owning our desert'.
People come to the Church in search of communion, in search of a pattern that may make sense of their lives, or their experiences. But the whole person craves meaning, not just the intellectual or the rational. The entire person stands in need of salvation, not just the head. There are four days in the year when people still come to the Church in great numbers: Christmas, of course; Good Friday, the blessing of the throats on the feast of St. Blaise and on Ash Wednesday. Now it's obvious why people come to Church in great numbers at Christmastide. The communal warmth is tangible. But it is not so obvious in the other three cases. For example, experts tell us that the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night is the most important feast of the year. Yet only a handful shows up for it while we pack the churches for the Blessing of the Throats
Our official liturgical celebrations have become increasingly verbal, far too wordy. For example, the congregation sits passively on Easter Night while nine readings, many of them unfamiliar and obscure, are read to them. Words address only the rational, thinking side of our person. The remaining four senses, -seeing, smelling, touching, tasting, - are not at all engaged. And it is primarily through these latter four senses that the primitive, subconscious, spiritual side of us is engaged. The practice of giving up drink or cigarettes for Lent engages the whole person, not just the mind. The whole personality is involved in what is ultimately and healthy and spiritual exercise.
During Lent we commemorate Christ's struggle in the Desert. The gospels tell us he was tempted by the devil. He was offered escapes from the reality that was himself. The carrot of power was dangled before him. Christ rejects this and remains true to his own identity, with his own reality. In the desert he faced that reality head-on, with all its limitations, weaknesses and temptations.
T.S. Eliot has an instructive few lines on this topic. Speaking of 20th century man he says:
You neglect and belittle the desert;
the desert is not remote in the southern tropics;
the desert is not only around the corner;
the desert is squeezed in the tube-train beside you;
the desert is in the heart of your brother.
The desert is in all our hearts. If we acknowledge its reality and strive to establish the identity of our devils, we may even tame them. Then, with God's help, their terror and their power over us will banish. So Lent, after all, need not necessarily be a seven-week grovel before a disgruntled God. Lent, we may well discover, is Easter in disguise.