Lent
is just around the corner, and the prospect of “mortification” and “fasting”
and “discipline” is not on the top ten list of anyone I know. Most of us see
this time of preparation for Easter as the “less fun” season of the liturgical
year; no peppy Lent songs like before Christmas, and less decoration. But Lent
has gotten a bad rep. As Anthony Bloom says so well, “Contrary to what many
think or feel, Lent is a time of joy. It is a time when we come back to life.
It is a time when we shake off what is bad and dead in us in order to become
able to live, to live with all the vastness, all the depth, and all the
intensity to which we are called. . . . This notion of joy that is connected
with effort, with ascetical endeavor, with strenuous effort may indeed seem
strange, and yet it runs through the whole of our spiritual life, through the
life of the Church and the life of the Gospel.”[2] If
we are to be like Jesus, if we are to draw out the Reign of God in our midst,
then we have to come to the realization that “The Kingdom of God is something
to be conquered. It is not simply given to those who leisurely, lazily wait for
it to come.”
So
if we are to take Lent seriously, there is work involved. And as with all
spiritual things in our lives, such work is a matter of desire, drive, and discipline.
We all need a Lent coach!
What
would a Lent coach do? The answer depends on the person receiving the coaching.
The unique background, interests, talents, habits, and aspirations of each
individual are brought into play for any coaching endeavor. But coaches also
know that some general things are true pretty much all of the time: i.e., you
have to motivate people, you have to show people how to do things right, and
you have to get people to practice the basics over and over and over again. The
funny thing is that athletes of all stripes are happy to make this effort for
sports, but few are willing to make this effort for their spiritual lives. Why
is that? And what would it look like if you actually followed the very best
Lent coach this year?
John
Baptist de La Salle, our Lasallian coach, “puts the emphasis on fidelity to the
duties of state, observance of the daily spiritual exercises, attention to
little things, in a word, on the mortification of the spirit and mind. . . . De
La Salle urges his disciples to accept, and even love, the sufferings of the
day in imitation of their teacher, Jesus Christ, and in living the Pascal
Mystery, or simply as a condition of the Christian life.”[3] He
is pointing the way to our very best coach for the Lenten season. Can you
guess?
That
very best Lent coach is Jesus himself; what he says in the readings during
Lent, what he shows us in his actions during Lent, and what he invites us to
enter into during the liturgies of Holy Week. Here is the best coach for our
spiritual lives. All we have to do is take his coaching seriously: pay
attention to how he motivates us, learn how to do things right, and practice the
basics over and over and over again.
What
would the result look like? Here is one example: “How often does someone cry
for help and we understand nothing? How often has our heart been stirred and
our mind begun to understand, but we were not used to compelling ourselves, and
our will wavered, and wavers too long, until it is too late. . . . Let us learn
first of all to be grateful that God gives us the possibility to do right,
instead of preening ourselves and being proud of the fact that for once we have
done what should be natural to us always. And then gradually we may . . . learn
to be humble in a way in which no one knows, not declaring that we are
unworthy, but in adoration of God’s greatness, in veneration of other
people, in the readiness to forget ourselves completely for the sake of
God, for the sake of any person who meets us and challenges us to be
compassionate, to be loving, to be understanding.[4]
Lent is an invitation to follow our coach from here to eternity.
[1] De
La Salle, John Baptist, Meditations by
St. John Baptist de La Salle, trans. Richard Arnandez, and Augustine Loes,
eds. Augustine Loes and Francis Huether, (Landover, MD: Christian Brothers
Conference, 1994), 293-4 (Med. 159.3)
[2] Bloom,
Anthony - http://mitras.ru/eng/eng_19.htm
[3] Rodrigue,
Jean-Guy – Introduction to the Meditations,
op. cit., 13.
[4] Bloom,
Anthony - http://www.mitras.ru/eng/eng_155.htm
