What was forbidden after the conquest of Jericho?

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Progressive Christian

Last updated on: March 3, 2006 at 2:53 pm by Cathleen Falsani

2006-03-03T14:53:00-07:00 Cathleen Falsani

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GODSTUFF:

GIVING UP GUILT FOR LENT

By the time I arrived at Assumption parish at 12:25 Wednesday afternoon, three lines of people waiting to get in spilled down the front steps of the church toward Illinois Street.

It was Ash Wednesday, after all, but the number of people clambering to get inside the church on a busy streetcorner in Chicago staffed by the Servite Fathers, a Roman Catholic religious order, surprised me.

As I hustled toward the line to the left, late and on my lunch hour like so many of my fellow penitents, it would seem, I started to think about why this particular ritual was so attractive to so many.

Maybe it’s a holy day of obligation, I puzzled. (It’s not.)

And it’s not like the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago has been having a banner month, what with the persistent demon of clergy sex abuse rearing its hideous head.

Again.

But it was standing room only inside Assumption, and as the mass wore on, people continued to arrive. Young and old. Men and women. Black, white, Hispanic, Asian.

Many of us were obvious first-timers (some of us not even Catholic) at the breathtakingly beautiful church tucked unassumingly on a corner in the middle of a busy business district — a couple of blocks from where the Kennedy Expy. disgorges its constant stream of automobiles from the Ohio Street exit.

“This is a really pretty church,” the chatty woman in front of me in line said to her colleague, who was busy digging for a dollar bill in her purse.

“I only have a dollar,” the colleague answered, motioning toward the collection basket next to the priest distributing ashes. “I feel so guilty.”

We pressed forward, straining to see the priest who was doling out ashes at the back of the church for the latecomers.

The pews were packed. People were praying. Really praying. The head-in-hands, down-on-the-kneeler, eyes-squeezed-shut kind of praying. Not for show. Not out of obligation. Sincere self-reflection.

At least, that’s what it seemed like to me.

Then I heard it — a soft-spoken litany uttered in the round by priests stationed around the sanctuary:

“Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.”

It wasn’t the traditional line about ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This one (an addition from the Second Vatican Council) was more personal. A call to action.

To examine myself. To make changes. To be better.

I have 40 days to straighten things out before Easter arrives. For most of Christendom, Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, 40 days (not counting Sundays) that precede Easter. (In the Orthodox Christian tradition, which follows a different calendar than most of the Western church, Lent begins on “Clean Monday,” March 6 this year.)

Lent has had different popular meanings during Christianity’s 2,000-plus years. In the early church, it was the time when more “mature” Christians fasted and prayed in support of the catechumens, the folks who were to be baptized at Easter. Later, it became more of a commemoration of the 40 days the Bible says Jesus spent alone fasting in the desert before he called his first disciples — and was eventually arrested, tried and crucified (and then, Scripture says, rose again from the dead for the redemption of the humankind).

Now, when people talk about Lent, it usually conjures up one primary question: “What are you giving up?”

I think that kind of misses the point. As I understand it, Lent is supposed to be a time of introspection, of taking spiritual stock, of repenting — which means making some changes in the way we live or think, work and love.

I used to loathe Lent. It was depressing, a failed exercise in self-denial and sacrifice that always left me feeling worse. Unlovable. Unworthy.

A shame spiral usually ensued.

That’s not what it’s supposed to be about, a wise woman once told me at a Maundy Thursday service years ago.

“None is worthy,” she said. “But all are welcome.”

Indeed.

If giving up chocolate or caffeine, booze or sugar or television helps you focus more on your spirit by sacrificing something that gives you physical pleasure, more power to you.

For me, it usually ends up being a distraction. And Lent, instead of being a time for serious spiritual spring cleaning, becomes the second week of January revisited, littered with broken resolutions, filled with guilt and shame.

A few years ago, I heard some clergyperson say that during Lent, instead of concentrating on giving something up, we should think about adding something positive, a discipline that will turn our focus inward.

Spend more time in prayer. Walk during your lunch hour and eat a cup of soup at your desk. Sit quietly at the kitchen table for five minutes before having your coffee. Let other drivers merge. Tip 20 percent instead of 15 percent. When gossip happens, walk away instead of listening, or adding fuel to the fire.

Last year, a dear friend of min, one of the most faithful and spiritually creative people I know, added instead of subtracting.

Her Lenten spiritual discipline? She danced alone in her living room to U2’s song “Yahweh” every morning before heading to work. Didn’t miss a day.

I loved that.

When I came back to the newsroom with the smudgy black cross on my forehead, someone asked me what I was going to be giving up.

“Nothing,” I said.

But that’s not true exactly. I have decided to try to give something up during this Lenten season: Guilt.

And I’m determined to add a Lenten discipline: Silence.

Even 10 minutes a day. So I can hear things.

Like the birds that have started to return as spring approaches.

Like the people I love who are trying to tell me what’s on their minds.

Like the still, small, eternal voice that wants me to know that I’m loved just for being and that there’s always a chance to right a wrong.

Maybe that’s why so many people are oddly drawn to the ash-stained black thumb of a priest asking them to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel, the one that tells us the greatest command is radical love.

Everybody wants to have a comeback, a fresh start, a karmic mulligan.

Lent reminds us that such grace happens.

People can change.

Do over.

Begin again.

Everyone gets another chance this season.

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