You may have heard about a preacher who appeared in the pulpit with a cut on his face. He announced that he had been focusing so much on his Lenten homily while shaving that he cut his face. And then he went on to give a 50-minute homily. After mass, a parishioner whispered to him: “Next time focus on your face and cut your homily!” Good advice.
We have begun our Lenten journey from ashes to Easter. It is a time to slow down and remember our purpose in life and get our priorities straight.
Today we're hearing the Grand Prix racing cars zooming through downtown St. Petersburg. In our high-speed world it’s a challenge to slow down, remember our purpose and get our priorities straight. Last Wednesday we had our foreheads smudged with ashes and may have heard a prayer, “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Dust symbolizes nothingness. It’s commonplace; it lies around loosely; it blows blindly. Yet God became dust in Jesus of Nazareth. And this Jesus charged dust with the grandeur of God through his death/resurrection. Now God abides in us and we in God by virtue of our baptism.
Lent tells us it's time for prayer; it's time to do without unnecessary things so the needy can have what’s necessary; it's time to reach out with a helping hand to others.
The word of God carries us back to the early history of ancient Israel. The book of Deuteronomy focuses on identity. Sometimes we check out our identity through DNA test kits. The author reminded the Hebrews of their roots: they were once at-risk nomads; exploited as cheap labor in Egypt; brought into a place of abundance; and now grateful to the God who saved them.
The author may be asking us: do we know our Christian identity? In baptism, we were branded and transformed into “new creatures,” sons and daughters of God our Father, called to live a God-like life. That’s our identity.
Paul, in his letter to the Christian community in Rome, proclaimed fundamental truths: Jesus is our Lord to whom we owe our allegiance; Jesus Christ lives; and because he lives, we live. Through the gift of faith, we have eternal friendship with God.
In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus was tempted in the wilderness as the Hebrews were tested centuries before. But where the Hebrews failed, Jesus succeeds.
The devil appears, as a seductive voice, tempting Jesus to use his powers to satisfy his hunger. But Jesus’s food is not bread alone, but also God's word.
The devil then offers Jesus earthly power and prestige if he will only worship him. But Jesus brushes the devil aside. To God alone belongs worship.
The devil finally asks Jesus to do a performance that will make him famous. But Jesus refuses to test God by asking for such a spectacular display. God's will be done, not mine.
In some form or other, these are temptations that we face: seeking only pleasure (or self-indulgence), pursuing power unscrupulously, or craving fame insatiably. Jesus will have none of these things. He will remain true to his identity and mission. He will serve God alone and do God’s will. Luke may be asking us how faithful are we to our spiritual identity as baptized Christians.
Yes, the Lenten season is a time to re-focus again on our first priority: our life with God.
Leo Tolstoy, the nineteenth century Russian author, can be a good introduction to Lent. Many of us probably had to read his novels Anna Karenina and War and Peace in school. But Tolstoy also wrote shorter, religious novels. Two are good spiritual reading for Lent.
A Confession, for example, expresses Tolstoy's own search for meaning and purpose. He discovered that the simple farm people of Russia found the answer to this question through their lively Christian faith: their relationship with God.
But perhaps Tolstoy’s masterpiece was the 75-page novel The Death of Ivan Ilyich. You may know the story. A man on his deathbed realizes he has wasted his life, and he's terrified of death. Tolstoy focuses our attention on Ilyich's life, illness and his spiritual crisis.
Most of the characters imagine what Ilyich's death means for their own lives, and think how grateful they are that it's Ilyich that's dying, and not they.
Ilyich, in exchange for luxury and status, has sacrificed his authenticity and integrity. The result is a spiritual barrenness, leaving him ill-equipped to deal with the specter of death. Ilyich always presumed that death was something for other people. Now he realizes its inescapability. He faces a mortality he never acknowledged.
Avoiding thoughts about death, in favor of superficialities, is not a flaw reserved for nineteenth-century Russians. It's the story of everyone.
Ilyich's last days are worsened by his realization that he has squandered his short time on earth with trivial pursuits. The servant who attends to him at his deathbed is everything Ilyich is not: humble, poor, devout and selfless. Ilyich manages to learn from the servant just before his last breath, our true purpose in life.
Tolstoy suddenly bathes Ilyich in light but leaves the reader in suspense about Ilyich's salvation or damnation.
This novel can be powerful Lenten spiritual reading because Lent is about asking what are our most important priorities. We follow Jesus who went out into the wilderness for forty days to ask the same questions.
Another writer, the 20th century American Frederick Buechner, gives us an examination of conscience in these four questions:
“If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? Second, of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo?
Third, which is the one that makes you happiest to remember?
Lastly, if this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it?
To try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only about who we are but about the way we are becoming and what we are failing to become.”
It can be a pretty depressing business, Buechner notes, “but if sackcloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end.”
As we begin again the Lenten season, let us ask God for the grace to pursue single-mindedly the true priority in life: eternal life in relationship with God and one another.
