The God Slot: Lent – are we grasping the opportunity?

By Fr Declan Boland

We need special times and spaces, to stop, review our lives and take stock of the direction of travel.

The season of Lent affords us this opportunity and we are now into the second week of this time of grace and possibility. I suspect many people go into default by automatically, going off drink, chocolates, the cakes and biscuits and other things as well. It is a kind of DIY spirituality: I do all these things so that at the end of 40 days my God will give me a trophy and a pat on the back? I will be the star pupil of the season, with no little personal satisfaction.

Did you ever stop to think that all of the above might have little or nothing to do with the invitation of the Lenten season? Why? Because it is all about me, my programme, my efforts, whereas the gift of repentance which is what Lent is all about is a pure gift of God, that cannot be controlled by any amount of our own efforts. It can only be received, and we have to experience our littleness, our insignificance and our poverty in order to receive it.

Repentance means a radical conversion by which a person retraces his or her own steps and strikes out in a new direction. It means a total about turn in order to turn to something or some one. It means a change of mind, or change of heart ie, change of intention, disposition, attitude; regret; conversion; sorrow for sin. It was the first word that John the Baptist used in his preaching, “The time has come,” he said “and the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. Repent and believe the Good News.” Mark 1:v15.

In Acts 3:19-20 we hear, “Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, and so that the Lord may send the time of comfort.”

Repentance is not a static thing that you do just for Lent. Sin – repentance – grace cannot be divided into three steps. They grow together and interact with one another. So please remember this and it may shock you: Sin, repentance and grace are my daily life and lot. Until our death we never completely say farewell to these three. We will always remain incomplete and sinners, in need of conversion, continually being cleansed by the Holy Spirit. It is always an illusion to think that we have been converted once and for all.

Antony the great and father of all monks said it well. “Every morning again, I say to myself, today I start.” We need time and God wants to take time with us.

So every day God works with us calling us to repentance. “O that today you would listen to my voice, harden not your hearts.” Ps 95:7-8. He speaks in various ways – through the scriptures, through the people with whom we live, and through all sorts of circumstances, both joyful and often very painful.

It is this internal reversal at which grace is working at day in and day out.

If we don’t be open to this then all our external activities, especially during Lent, run the risk of coming to nothing. For it is God who comes to touch us in countless ways to teach us conversion of heart and repentance.

We can only hold ourselves in readiness, to let ourselves be disturbed, overtaken and emotionally moved by God.

For a great deal has to happen that lies completely outside the reach of our good will and our natural generosity. Reversal and renewal of heart means not merely that we will be inwardly wounded but that we must be shaken to our very foundations. It means that perhaps we will be broken, that something inside us will collapse – something like a concrete bunker on which we worked for years – like a defence system protecting ourselves from our deepest desires, against others, with the risk that it would even protect us even against God’s grace!

That collapse is only just the beginning even though a happy one. We must be on our guard not to try to build up again what has broken down.

This is something we have to learn, for there is always a strong temptation to put scaffolding around that crumbling façade and to try to tidy it up.

We must learn to embrace the collapse and sit down amid the rubble without bitterness or guilt, with hopeful resignation full of surrender, confident as a child who dreams that his father will fix things again, that he knows how to rebuild in a very different way now, but much better than before. Stay open! Stay brave!