Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence,
and take not thy holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
Psalm 51: 10 -12
The wondrous, penitential season of Lent is upon us. On Ash Wednesday Catholics all over the world were marked with an ashen cross upon their forehead and told, plainly, without affectation: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Paired with a day of fasting and abstinence, one would think that it’d be a rather glum affair. But I looked about at friends, colleagues and loved ones, to see the days typical, delicate joy, the lightness of their bearing, and their hope, and was reminded of the truth of Lent.
Finally, we come face to face with an existence that is truer to our calling than at any other time of year. Asked to engage in a the sober penances of our own design for roughly forty days and forty nights seems to bring out the best of us, as we strip away the dross of a life that is unexamined, and hence, inundated with an multitude of incidental pulls, pleasures and practices. We examine our relationship with everything around us, to strip away the anything that may range from superfluous to self-indulgent - to accompany Christ in the desert where he “was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil.”
In a wonderful talk given by our parish priest, he reminded us to be earnest, unforgiving and zealous in our lenten penances - to find what we truly need to set aside, to make time and space for God in our lives. Afterwards, my beloved wife prompted me, as she does most years - you know what this means, don’t you? I love coffee. Real coffee, espresso brewed in a caffetiera on a stove top. I’ve loved it for a long time, and have even written, in jest, about my philosophy of coffee consumption. I adore the scent, the flavour, the texture, the weight of it. I love loading up the caffetiera, and waiting to hear it boil over into the top chamber. I love sharing it with loved ones. I love enjoying it short, and black, or sometimes with a dose of hot water to stretch it out. I pace out the day, punctuate it with two things: prayer, and coffee.
You know what this means, don’t you? Unfortunately, I did. She noticed me bristling at the suggestion, and before I even made it through the first line of evasion, I knew that she was right. It’s a logical penance - for the time it draws from the day - for the degree of affection I have for it - for the sense of dependence it fosters. I had to give it up, because I love it too much, and there is an ugly, weak willed dependance that needs to be killed off and offered up. Thus, I’m off coffee for this Lent, and a week in so far, I’m surviving, having attempted a strategic scaling down in the lead up to the season.
There are a number of attachments that inevitably follow, for a full, penitential suite. There will be less music, particularly when it’s playing, unassumingly in the background, without deliberately listening to it - relishing it. Playing and practicing is a different story, a different act, and discipline, that needn’t be stymied. There will be less podcasts, again, refusing to fill the space and silences of my life with futile distraction. Not that all podcasts are create equal - if something is spiritually edifying - it may well have a place in the course of my day, but generally, I tend towards silence, creating space for prayer, during Lent. The avoidance of the sweetest, the saltiest and the crunchiest of culinary delights is custom, along with an abstinence from the typical entertainment that might mark the occasional free evening.
And herein lies the discovery that feels new and old, every Lent. That this is the authentic life. That this is so much closer to the truth, to the reality of His love for us, and our proper orientation to His word and his light. Lent isn’t the aberration - but rather the restoration, cutting away the noise, the distraction, the dross, to find what lies beneath - a simple, humble, clear minded appreciation of the Blessed Trinity, and our right relationship to God and God alone.
All else becomes secondary, subservient. In Lent, we appreciate how to weigh, balance and temper our desires and designs in a more ordered approximation of His will for our lives. In Lent, we tilt, delicately, towards sanctity, and salvation, realising how much else was utterly irrelevant, or ultimately distracting, from our ultimate pursuit of Christ and Christ alone, in the midst of our daily lives.
Thus, dear reader, I pray your Lent is appropriately confronting, challenging, purgative, that you may know more of His light and His truth, as I hope to in this blessed season.
I hope that you might pray for my Lent, too.