Ash Wednesday and the Season of Lent
Joseph McCauslin
Hello Everyone:
As many of you are aware, today is Mardi Gras or Fassnacht (as is known locally). Mardi Gras is a time of licentious indulgence on life’s more carnal pleasures. The reason why it is called “Fat Tuesday” is because it is the day whenever people would try and use all of the fat stored in the house in order to be free of it just in time for Lent. As much as we as a church respect the traditions of Mardi Gras (especially concerning its more libertine values), we also embrace the discipline of the season of Lent.
The reason why Mardi Gras is so hedonistic is because it follows Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent and a day to contemplate the mortality of human existence. Ashes (made from burning the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter) are placed on the forehead in the form of the cross. This is to remind us that while we exist in this world of the 4 elements (represented by the cross), we are inevitably doomed to dance with Death. Lent lasts for 40 days (Sundays don’t count) until Holy Week which begins on Palm Sunday.
A major theme in Gnosticism is transcendence from the hylic (material) world into a greater spiritual consciousness. In fact, many Gnostic scriptures are pretty consistent in stating that it is the allure of the material world that keeps us blind and ignorant to the essential reality behind all arising phenomenon. Therefore, Lent is a time of self-denial and abstinence in order to clear one’s vision and to be freed from the chains of our wants and addictions. As the Master’s Prayer states in our liturgy, “Do not let surface things delude us, but free us from what holds us afar.”
Scripturally, the season of Lent remembers the 40 days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert before he began his ministry. This is reminiscent of when Moses and the freed Hebrews from Egypt wandered the desert for 40 years in search of the Holy Land. The season of Lent is a trial, an initiation to be earned. Jesus spent his time searching not for external Holy Land, but instead a perfect and pure consciousness within himself, but it wasn’t easy. Throughout this time, when Jesus was hungry, thirsty and roaming alone in the desert, that he was tempted with food, power and the sweet release of death itself. This is the crux of the season. Lent bears great rewards but, like Jesus, it won’t be easy and we will be tempted the entire time to abandon our commitment to change.
Lent is observed in a number of ways. Most churches that bear high pomp and circumstance (ours is one of them) usually tone it down quite a bit. The music is a bit more somber, the decorations are covered within the churches and the tone is quieted for contemplation. We use a Lenten style liturgy currently, with our themes of silent meditation and personal reflection. When we change our regular liturgy to be the full service, we will return to this quieter, contemplative liturgy for the season of Lent. Many people fast during Lent. The Church’s definition of a fast (from the Roman Canon) is a day’s diet that consists of three meals, where the total amount of the first two meals combined is less than the third meal, excluding all meat except fish. Some people simply abstain from meat during Lent, particularly on Fridays.
Most people practice some sort of “sacrifice” for Lent, giving up a particular luxury for the entirety of the season. It could something like candy, TV, cigarettes, sex, whatever. This sounds harder than it is. I know quite a few people that would go crazy if they had to give up something like Facebook or ice cream, in spite of the fact that the human race has lived generations with the same amount of joy and pain that you do, even without these tiny entertainments. The rewards of Lent show us that real happiness and joy comes not from these distractions but instead from within ourselves and the people around us. As much as Lent is a time of abstinence from material luxury, it is simultaneously a time to indulge in family, friends, the simple beauty of nature, the peace of silence and the joy of merely sitting with God.
Lent also is a time of repentance and forgiveness. It is a time to look back through our lives, dig around in those dark corners of our memories and subconscious and to clean out that closet of skeletons. ““On Easter Sunday, the angels stood outside the tomb and asked the women who had come to anoint the body, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead?’” What are the things in your life that you refuse to let go off in spite of the fact that it is slowly eating you alive? What benefit do you get from dragging around all of that baggage? Why are you searching for joy and life on Farmville, when what you have been looking for all of this time is within you? Lent is a time to ask for forgiveness for the many moments throughout life that we choose ‘hurt’ over ‘heal’. It is a time to forgive ourselves for all those things that we beat ourselves up over. It is a time to let go of any hurt, pain and hatred that we hold on others, realizing that we are all capable of great pain and offense, sympathizing with those that have given us such ingrained examples of human cruelty and wishing them spiritual healing and love. “Loose the cords of mistake binding us as we release the strands we hold on others’ guilt.”
Lent becomes a test that many of us will fail. That’s okay. I know I have throughout the many years that I have taken Lent to heart. It is a test to see which is stronger: the strength and power of our inner will or the allure and temptations of the world around us. As we skip along through life, we become unconscious of the hold that the physical world has on us. Especially in today’s age where everything and anything is right at our fingertips and a sense of entitlement wafts through the air, but hardly any of us think of how influential these material things are to us and how much we use the physical reality to fill an emotional and spiritual hole. It isn’t until we make a conscious decision to let go of these things, that the demon behind our attachment rears its ugly head.
If done right, Lent should kill you. That is the point. It is the shedding of the serpent’s skin. If the serpent never lets go of its old self, it would surely die within its own fleshy tomb. When it is all over, a part of you is dead and buried and a new you resurrects in the end. Where Easter is the testimony of Spring, the season of Lent preceding it is what gives Easter its glory. Lent very much is like the blossom that struggles to reach the surface. It is called to the warmth of the increasing sun and it struggles forth bursting from the seed of its potential, through the rock and soil until it can burst forth the earth’s crust and bath in the glorious light, no longer a seed but now a fully bloomed flower. The lesson here is that the flower can never be the gentle, fragrant blossom of its true nature unless it first drops the hard, exterior prison of the seed. A mission like this requires work, effort and courage. Lent provides us with an opportunity to tap into these inner qualities, proving to ourselves and the world that there is more to us than the eye can see; more to us that even we ourselves are aware.
I hope all of you take Lent to heart this year. I hope for this because I really want you to learn how strong, committed and able you actually are. This is the process of gnosis. Knowing yourself is not about making an assessment and inventory of qualities or lack thereof. Gnosis is testing the limits that we and the world have erroneously placed upon us, learning not who are now but instead getting to know the person that we have the potential of being.
Blessings on you all and may the season of Lent be more rewarding than you can imagine.
In Service: RMJ