On Lent

The way I see it, there are two types of people in this world.

There are the people who know their truth.  They study it; they learn it; they proclaim it.  Very, very loudly they proclaim it.  They are so very certain in their truth that they spread it to the world in a loud and forceful manner.  They attempt to save the world through their proclamations.  They consider it their duty to instruct through their words.  They believe passionately, and they speak passionately.  Certainty is their right hand.

Then there are the other people.  They study their truth, and they learn it.  In every way they can manage, they attempt to be more fully clothed in the truth.  And then they live it.  Very, very loudly they live it.  If presented, they will defend their beliefs and they will share them.  They will instruct.  They will always stand up for what they believe in.  But they consider it their duty to live their truth.  Passionately.  Their mouths may sometimes be silent, but always they are speaking their truth.

Unfortunately, for many years I found myself drawn to the first.  I listened to the proclamations.  I listened to the verdicts.  I listened to the overwhelming quantity and volume of the words, and because of it, I found myself doubting Catholicism.  I had spent my life in the Catholic Church.  I had seventeen years of Catholic education.  But I found myself listening to voices that were contrary to what I had always been led to believe.  In contrast with a discerning spirit and a ear for truth, I found myself blindly following the loud outspoken words, and I began to believe there was no place for me in the church that I considered home.  And I left for quite a few years.

This was all on my mind tonight while Magoo and I sat at the Good Friday service this evening.

I was thinking about two things, seemingly unrelated, that happened to me this week.

1.  I learned that not all Christians celebrate Lent and the Holy Triduum.

2.  My pastor sent out an email equating his joy with Holy Week to that of a kid at Disney World.

The first was surprising to me.  I guess being a cradle Catholic and going to Catholic school for all of those years kept me pretty much entrenched in a world of Catholicism.  Looking at a sampling of my friends to this day will confirm that — the overwhelming majority of them are Catholic.  But with this newfound knowledge, a brief wave of jealousy washed over me.  I already knew that not all denominations gave up meat on Fridays, but now I was learning that they didn’t all celebrate Lent or give things up for Lent.  Yea, the petty worldly side of me reacted like a 16 year old kid, and I found myself feeling a bit put out.  Luckily though, the grown up part of my brain took over again and I started to think about Easter without Lent.

See growing up, we used to go to church on Holy Thursday and Good Friday.  I believe we started when I was in junior high or high school.  I remember those masses very clearly.  I remember the church with its stained glass windows darkened from the night outside.  I remember the somber hymns and the silence through which the bells rang.  I looked forward to those nights.  It felt intimate and familiar and comforting.

Easters, however, I don’t remember so much.  Actually, I can’t really remember a single Easter mass growing up.

But sitting in church tonight with Magoo, I found that familiar feeling wash over me again.  I felt the comfort.  I felt the presence of people that I fill the pews with every Sunday throughout the year.  I saw Magoo’s classmates who she spends her days with.  I saw the priests and the deacons who lead us in mass and Baptize my daughters and instruct Magoo in school, all standing around the alter in quiet homage to the holiness of the hour, their familiar smiles and laughs silenced by the seriousness of the moment.

And I started to realize that without Lent, what is Easter?

I remember some youth ministry masses from when I was a teenager.  I was a part of a Catholic youth group with kids from my school and other area Catholic schools.  We always felt that the masses were so much deeper, for lack of a better word, than the traditional Sunday masses.  They spoke to us.  The songs were popular songs about friendship and caring. It was centered around community.  We spoke of Jesus as Him who comes to save us and comfort us and bring us through trial.  It was about us and what God can do for us.

And so is Easter.  Yes, Easter is about the triumphant victory of God over death.  It’s about glory and salvation and eternity.   It’s the most glorious day of the year.  It’s the celebration of the victory.  But if we don’t count the cost, if we don’t venerate the sacrifice, if we don’t live in the passion, can we fully rejoice in the redemption?

And so that brought me back to my second point above.  Holy week as equivalent to Disney World.  Speaking purely theologically, this now makes sense to me.  This week of sacrifice and honor and mourning is IT.  It is what gives our lives meaning.  It’s what we can unite our sacrifices with.  It’s the remembrance of the great price that was paid for our greatest victory.

Just like childbirth is great pain culminating in a much greater joy, so too are the events that led up to that first Easter.  The point is the reward.  The promise is the victory.  But without the pain, the reward isn’t quite as sweet, isn’t quite as lived.  We become without ever going through the rite of becoming.

I am most definitely not a Catholic theologian.  Half the questions Magoo asks me, I have to send her back to her teacher, and half the questions I have, she can answer.  But what I do know is that we can go to mass on Easter, and we can sing loudly.  We can walk around the streets in our fanciest Easter dresses, and we can proclaim to anyone who can hear the glory of the season.

Or we can kneel down in the dark on Holy Thursday in front of the Sacrament.  We can pray in thanksgiving and in gratitude and in awe and in petition.  We can take the sacrifice of the Lenten season and allow it to transform us and teach us of our weakness.  We can show up on Easter Sunday and we can sing loudly and proudly.  And in our hearts, we can be absolutely still and sing out praise and thanksgiving from the recesses of our hearts.

Some people like the loud.  Some people prefer the quiet.  But the ones who speak most loudly to me are the ones who never open their mouths at all.

For me, it’s through walking the path to salvation that I am able to find the peace that will allow my mouth to be still while my actions speak the words.  It’s what allows me to find the humility to receive the reward.  It’s what teaches me that the pain must come before the victory and that there is a God out there who is willing to endure that pain to allow my redemption.