Lent

Lent
When I was a young boy, I always found Lent to be one of those dreary festivals. It involved lots of praying, abstinence, fasting, and, during Holy Week, seriousness (no TV, no music, no laughter). It is easy to imagine how this could readily impact any young person more interested in learning and enjoying life than in contemplating its deeper secrets.
Now that I’m grown up, it feels like all that “sacrifice” as a juvenile was for nothing as today, eateries are open, tourist spots are booming, and, except for the services that are on-going in churches, there appear no visible signs of Lent.
Such a contrast naturally raises some questions in my mind: what is Lent? What do we really know about Lent? It starts with Ash Wednesday when we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return; and it culminates on Black Saturday (although for most of us, Good Friday already provided the necessary relief). It covers the final days of Christ on earth. It is a good time to watch Ben Hur. So it does have a number of characteristics and yet none really tell me what it is.
Clearly something extraordinary happened during this time. Perhaps the clue to Lent is found in Easter. In Easter, there is the complete transformation of the physical being of Christ. This body, literally changes, as previewed in the Transfiguration. And while it may easy to say that such happens because He is Christ, it does not diminish the greatness of the event. After all, it was not a magical trick. It required considerable preparation, at least 30 years on earth with three years of ministry. The preparation required 12 assistants, one of whom was to betray Him. It also involved a number of women, thieves, blind people, cripples and yes, even the dead. The highest priests of the time were involved as they challenged and sought to discredit Christ’s work, and ultimately, just to ensure His execution, totally deny the existence of God. There was even an invading power, the greatest at the time, that was dragged into the quagmire of local politics. And through all this, Christ endured and ultimately resurrects.
With such a range of events, therefore, it would seem impossible to look at Lent as just another festival, albeit somber. In fact, it is the first of four festivals (Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost) that span about one-third of the year. Like its three related festivals, it is also the remaining Christian festival that is dictated by the moon and the sun and not on a fixed date. All this adds to the mystery of Lent.
What happens during Lent, then, that makes it so deeply special. One way of looking at it was to consider what we would do if we knew we were going to die. The average person would go through various stages, including denial, and finally acceptance. If one was to be executed, however, this brings about additionally reactions including, for some, a sort of repentance. In both these cases, something interesting happens to the human being: death and evil become extremely real. Yes, you will die; and yes, your life is rife with evil. It may sound amazing because it inevitably points to the other side: in our daily lives, we deny our mortality and we deny that evil is part of our being. Interesting but most likely true. In our daily lives, it is as if a veil of some sort shrouds our vision of how much death and evil are part of the human being. It underscores our inability to totally grasp our true nature. We often speak of our mortality or our evil ways in an almost abstract sense, as if we were totally removed from it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Death and evil are very much part of our human nature. It is the cause of our daily struggles: we want live and we want to be good. However, we never actually confront these two facets of our lives. Lent provides us all the opportunity to do so.
During the Lenten season, by reliving the experience of Christ, we come to an experience about our mortality and our own evil ways. Christ meets both not only with confidence but with equanimity. This comes from a deeper understanding about the role that death plays in material existence and the role that evil plays in our daily lives. Modern challenges and modern science seem to work hand-in-hand to make it more and more difficult for us to understand how much death and evil are part of human nature. To this is added another realization: we face these facets of our being only as individuals. While it is true our friends may provide support, in the end, we, as individuals, must come to grips with our true nature, including our mortality and our evil ways.
Lent has a certain heaviness to it; not necessarily because it is a sad time, but perhaps because it is a time of serious preparation for our journey back to our spiritual origins. To prepare properly, we need to know who we are, down to the smallest nook and cranny of our being. This to most of us will be an almost impossible task. But we can start with what one may call “quick wins.” And these include the lessons we learn about ourselves during Lent.
Thus Lent is not all about darkness and gloom. In fact, in Lent, there radiates the greatest light of all humanity: true courage. Courage born from within creates a space for Christ to be part of our lives. Then, hand in hand with Christ, this courage may radiate to others and through this courage, others will learn to face their own true nature. By showing us the way, Christ already showed His deep understanding of the nature of humanity. He provides a helping hand. In Lent, we take the time to prepare for the future by understanding the present. Hopefully, the material temptations of our modern world, are used creatively in bringing about this understanding as well.