The Grace of Lent
A Reflection by Karen Brugge
I love the Lenten desert now. As a child, I dreaded this season. It held the pain of the telling of a torturous death, and—growing up in a Catholic family—Fridays with no salami. But as I have further traveled along my spiritual journey, I find the Lenten desert a spacious invitation to “give up” what clutters my mind and heart and make room to listen to God. It is the grace of Lent.
No matter how we find ourselves along the Lenten journey—barely aware of the season, getting a late start, or participating actively—I believe we can enter and be held in a desert moment. Like Jesus, we too can be led by the Spirit into the wilderness where God will “speak tenderly” to each “heart.” I think of the words author Peter Traben Haas shares in his book, “Centering Prayer: A One Year Daily Companion.” “It is as if God says to us: I am the eternal waiting for all to return home to me. Your arrival is not to a place per se. It is to a relationship. Your prayer supports your return and our growing relationship.” [1]
The liturgical season of Lent draws our attention to our relationship with God. In authentic relationship with the Holy, we are called to be our true selves—God’s beloved—and to accept God as God truly is—Love. It can be challenging to accept that God loves us unconditionally. For me, it asks me to unravel fears: of unworthiness; of God’s rejection if I am truly seen “warts and all”; of the false but sometimes fiercely held notion that I must earn God’s love, that I have to “pay my dues” in some way. Henri Nouwen’s experience reflects a truth for us, perhaps, when he writes, “My true spiritual work is to let myself be loved, fully and completely.”
The spaciousness of the desert invites us to open some space in our day, in our hearts, to listen for that enduring love in which we are held. We are loved fully—in what has been, what is, and what is becoming within us. Author and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister says, “Lent enables us to face ourselves, to see the weak places, to touch the wounds in our own soul, and to determine to try once more to live beyond our lowest aspirations. It reorients, re-grounds, and recenters us, empowering us to live in a more whole way. It offers us. . . Spring.”
The Lenten desert may be calling our hearts to Spring. Notice what is Spring-ing in your soul. Is there something to let wither and leave behind in the hard ground of a winter? Are there tears to be shed to “water” healing and new life in some part of you? What seems to draw you towards the sunlight of new growth? Sometimes my heart sits in the mud of a Spring shower, sometimes like a bulb below ground whose unfurling cannot yet be seen, and sometimes with hope, opening like a bare branch’s first blossom. Wherever you find yourself in the midst of the Lenten season, God may speak tenderly to your heart. Blessings as we journey together, called into Lenten desert, beckoning us along the path to resurrection.
[1] Haas, Peter Traben, Centering Prayer: A One Year Daily Companion (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2013).
Karen Brugge
Karen Brugge is a Sacred Circle Coordinator and facilitator and a member of the Retreat, Reflect, Renew Leadership Team. She is currently in formation to become a spiritual director.