Lent is a season to give alms and attend to the needs of others especially the poor

 

People we trust denounce, stab us straight in the chest

Christendom begins the countdown to the end of Lent tomorrow, Sunday March 25. The last seven days to the Resurrection mark the Christian Holy Week. Traditionally, Lent as a holy Christian season of prayer, reflection and self-denial. We have come a long way, however, even in the context of the past few decades, into an age when the Lenten season seems to just slip by, chocked by daily cares and wherefores of life.

 The daily suffering that informs life virtually everywhere, and especially in Africa, distorts the objectives of Lent. The assumption is made that you have luxuries you will deny yourself of, as part of duty to God, society and even yourself.  

For forty days preceding Good Friday, the good Christian is expected to exercise austerity. As students of divinity years ago, we learned of Lent as a season of prayers and penitence.

They taught of the need to refrain from the gratification of the flesh and allied appetites, as well as the import of pious reflection. Charity, they taught, should be in its element, with alms giving and attending to the needs of others – and especially the poor.

Described as a season of “bright sadness,” Lent was meant to be a period of “gloomy but cheerful reflection” about the meaning of life. It taught you to exercise justice to God through prayer. To your neighbours, you exercised justice through alms giving. And finally, to yourself, you exercised justice through fasting. You were allowed to break your fast on Sundays, to resume the next day.

OPPORTUNITY TO GRATIFY

We live today in a cutthroat world where poverty, pain and suffering constitute the common coin of life. Certainly, in the context, we pray – we must pray. We can only pray.

The prayers must invariably be self-serving. We pray that good things should come our way, while – possibly – we also hope in the same prayer that some ill fortune will befall someone. We pray that the Lord shall protect us as we pace through the valley of the shadow of death. Yet we concurrently want the Lord to lay a table for us before our enemies!

It is not so clear that we fast, however. If we go without eating during the day, it is most likely because there is nothing to eat anyway. We couldn’t possibly call that fasting.

And not having much, the thought of alms giving does not arise for the majority. In the circumstances, if they got the opportunity to gratify the flesh, they would make full use of it.

Rationalisation replaces repentance. It is a harsh world where self-preservation is easily the predominant instinct. Even in the holy shrine itself, the focus seems to have steadily shifted from the Gospel of Salvation to the Gospel of Instant Self Gratification. The spinoff is a selfish order dominated by deceit and betrayal, another common theme in the season of Lent. 

Prof C E M Joad (1891 – 1953) taught of prayer as adoration and penitence and only finally as supplication. As adoration, prayer manifests in marveling at the greatness of God, such as King David is fond of in the Psalms.

Prophet Isaiah is also rich in adoration, such as when he sinks into sublime poetry with words like, “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.”

To the extent that prayer is no longer adulatory, but rather about the Gospel of Wealth, does the Church itself fail in doing justice to God? Does it fail further when supplication is itself limited to worldliness? As for penitence, even at the best of times modern Christendom only awkwardly stumbles through the words, “Forgive us our trespasses, even as we forgive ….” And this knowing only too well that vindictiveness dominates our spirit everywhere.

Without any personal claim to piety, I recognise the extent to which Christendom has digressed from traditional orthodoxy, in this age of the Gospel of Wealth and Worldliness. For this is the gospel I hear every Sunday in Church, and everyday on sundry self-proclaimed Christian platforms.

 It is hugely a loud and noisy gospel. It screams at some deaf deity, almost as if it was throwing up a tantrum because of delayed divine attention. In the process, the Church has failed in its role as the foremost ethical and moral pillar of society. If we have read where it is written, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,”(Rom 12:2), is it possible that the Christian shrine has surrendered to both the thorns and the allures of life? 

WORTH REFLECTING

The ultimate theatre of betrayal is the political arena. People we have trusted and respected no longer stab us in the back. Like Shakespeare’s Brutus, they stab us straight in the chest. Before we can even ask, “Even you Brutus?” they are everywhere denouncing you.

As we enter the dying moments of this year’s season of Lent, it is worth reflecting on the words of the sage who said, “Beware the person who stabs you and then tells the world they’re the ones who’s bleeding.” If Christ were to come back today, it is likely that we would betray him again and move to broadcast how he betrayed us. Have a reflective Holy Week.