by Fred Moleck
Lenten Countdown
Lent has many connotations about what is done in the name of penance—giving up sweets or doing something special that would surely improve one’s spiritual well-being, such as going to daily Mass.In most instances, there is to be some type of uncomfortableness, whether it is fasting or avoiding favorite chocolate, one has to “suffer a little” and offer it up.
It was never very clear to me to what or whom I was offering whatever disagreeable experience I was enduring. It might have had something to do with buying out of time in purgatory.
Today, what seems to have subsided is the Tridentine and pre-Tridentine view that every day in Lent is a little Good Friday. Every day was one more step to the Crucifixion.
This via dolorosa lasted forty days—Quadragesima is the official Latin name—forty days before Easter. So, the penitential Christian had forty days to beat himself or herself up. The Sundays in Lent, however, didn’t count.
I knew of one zealot who sprinkled corn on his bedroom floor and knelt on the corn as he said his daily rosary. Really!
Now that the Third Sunday of Lent is behind us, a plateau has been reached in the Lenten journey.
Such a plateau offers an opportunity to evaluate how successful we have been in achieving enlightenment in the Lenten journey.
Have the chocolate sweets made loathsome by our rejection of them or the deprecatory self-examinations brought us into a deeper understanding of the Lenten journey and the paschal mystery?
One thing is for sure—these exercises are highly personal. There is no communal response or direction wanted or given. It is my sacrifice. It is my meditation. It is my one way through Lent.
There is, however, a new wave of taking the private Lenten disciplines and giving them a global perspective. Yes, global perspectives have now entered my personal space.
In last Sunday’s Washington Post’s religion section there is an interesting and encouraging piece about this type of expansion of consciousness that moves the personal into a much larger sphere.
The writer, Emily Langer, describes the work of several churches in the Washington, DC, area that have taken seriously the crises of global warming and have initiated direct and clear moves to a “carbon fast.”
For example, at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Rockville, Maryland, each day in Lent has an assigned discipline.
For example, on Ash Wednesday the members of the church were asked to take out the light bulbs in their homes. On March 29 they were encouraged to turn off radios and television sets.
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, terminates a carbon fast on April 19 when it breaks ground for a church garden. Its produce will go to a food pantry or to poor members of the congregation.
One pastor plans to refrain from using her car for one week. Their common ground is an environment that is carbon free.
What the supporters of the movement show is that their tiny sacrifices are not personal whims but have global implications that will affect the quality of life for future generations.
Quoted in the article is Anthony Tambasco, Georgetown University professor of theology, who sees that the destruction of the environment has “consequences [that] are felt not only by individuals but by communities and across generations.”
The carbon-free programs of these churches can be implemented immediately in any church, temple, synagogue, or mosque. It can also become a family project.
It needs no formal decree to start. How about this coming weekend gather a few of your friends and discuss how to begin a campaign addressing some of the issues.
Make it a project of the choir or the folk ensemble or any group who gathers in the name of Jesus with the first meeting the Saturday after Easter.
Your motto could be: The resurrection of Jesus brings us new life . . . it’s up to us to take care of it in the world that we have been given.
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@comcast.net