A Lenten Meditation

 

An Itinerary of Conversion

Two of the most important accomplishments of modern Catholicism were embraced on February 14, 2024 or Ash Wednesday

1. The rediscovery of the baptismal character of Lent, the ancient penitential season that precedes Easter.

2. The restoration of the Paschal Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil

Over the centuries, the summit of the Church’s year of grace — the celebration of Christ’s passing over from death to life, for which the Church prepares in Lent — had become encrusted with liturgical barnacles that gradually took center stage in the drama of Holy Week.

And while some of them had a beauty of their own, such as the morning Tenebrae service of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, their overall effect diminished the liturgical richness of the Triduum.

For example, the Easter Vigil’s (evening before) essence is one of a dramatic night-watch. At this time, the Church gathers at the Lord’s tomb to ponder the great events of salvation history and to await the bright dawn of the Resurrection – and this became almost completely obscured in importance.

Similarly, Lent had an intensely baptismal character centuries ago, but it developed into something almost exclusively penitential. It became more about what Catholics must NOT do, rather than a season focused on the heart of the Christian vocation and mission—conversion to Jesus Christ and the deepening of our friendship with him.

However, thanks to Pope Pius XII (1939-1958) who restored The Easter Vigil, along with the liturgical reforms mandated by the Second Vatican Council, Catholics of the twenty-first century can celebrate both Lent and the Paschal Triduum in the richness of their evangelical and baptismal character. These can again become moments of intensified conversion to Christ and incorporation into his Body, the Church.

Lent, once dreaded, has actually become popular. Churches are full on Ash Wednesday, and the disciplines of Lent—fasting, almsgiving, intensified prayer—have now been properly centered within the great human adventure of continuing conversion. Celebrated with appropriate solemnity, the Paschal Triduum today is what it should be: the apex of the liturgical year.

Those who were initially conformed to Christ in Baptism, along with those baptized at the Easter Vigil, relive the Master’s Passion and Death in order to experience the joy of the Resurrection, the decisive confirmation that God’s purposes in history will be vindicated.

This revival of Lent in the Catholic Church has involved the rediscovery of the Forty Days as a season shaped by the catechumenate: the period of education and formation through which adults who have not yet been baptized are prepared to receive Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist, the three sacraments of Christian initiation, at the Easter Vigil.

The baptismal character of Lent is not for catechumens only, however.

 The adult catechumenate (called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or RCIA) offers an annual reminder to the Church that all of us are always in need of conversion. The Church’s conversion, the Church’s being-made-holy, is a never-ending process.

Baptism, the Scriptures tell us, is “for the forgiveness of sins.” That central aspect of the sacrament is most dramatically manifest in the baptism of adults at the Easter Vigil. However, those who were baptized in infancy, and who inevitably fall into sin – as we all do - are also in need of forgiveness. Thus baptism “for the forgiveness of sins” is a prominent theme throughout Lent and reminds all the baptized that they, too, require liberation from the bad habits that enslave us and impede our friendship with Christ: from SIN, in other wordst.

To immerse in the pilgrimage of Lent is to follow an itinerary of conversion. Lent affords every baptized Christian the opportunity to reenter the catechumenate, to undergo a “second baptism,” and thus to meet once again the mysteries of God’s mercy and love….

The Bible includes three paradigmatic forty-day periods of fasting and prayer:

1. Moses, who prepared for forty days to receive to receive the Ten Commandments, the moral code that God gives his chosen people to help them avoid falling back into the habits of slaves [Deuteronomy 9.9]; 

2. Elijah, who fasted “forty days and forty nights [at] Horeb the mount of God,” prior to hearing the “still, small voice” of the Lord passing by [1 Kings 19:8]

3. Jesus, prior to his temptation by Satan in the desert.

Thus the “forty days” of Lent—Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, exclusive of Sundays (which were always exempted from the Lenten fast)—evoke for us two great figures from the Hebrew Bible...

Moses the lawgiver, and Elijah the model of prophecy. Of course, Our Lord’s own fast in the desert is included, which is variously described in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, was the crucial prelude to his public ministry.

In all three biblical instances, these forty days mark a stepping-aside from the ordinary rhythms of life, so we might be more open to the promptings of the spirit of God. From that, we can be more deeply converted to walking along God’s path through history.

That “stepping aside” is a primary characteristic of Lent and, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, embodies the three cornerstones of Lent:

Fasting
Almsgiving
Penetential prayer.

“Giving up _____” for Lent would have little more meaning than a weight-loss program were it not accompanied by a deeper encounter with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through prayer, spiritual reading, reflection, and a new concern for those in need. Thus, the special practices of the Forty Days, like the liturgies of each day of Lent, constantly bring the Christian back to the primordial call of Christ: “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” [Mark 1.15].

—George Weigel, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches