Morning Devotion for Lent
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
The Invitatory
Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repents of evil.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
The Lord is full of compassion and mercy: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Luke 18:9-14
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Meditation – Michael Palmisano
Every year, countless people of the Church (and outside of the Church) take upon themselves fasts in observance of the Great Forty Days of Lent. I admit, I do find it amusing the ways in which we deceive ourselves and often coopt Lent as a sort of “re-up” on the New Year’s resolutions from which we have gone delinquent. Ultimately, we end up setting arbitrary parameters for our fasts and doing mental gymnastics to stay within the bounds of our practices of abstinence. For example, I recall one of my best friends in college giving up desserts for Lent, all the while never conceding that his favorite snack of “Fig Newtons” fit into the ontological category of a “cookie” (a hotly contested issue of course). All of this should force us to ask: “Are our practices of fasting for God or for us?”
The truth is, God does not demand our fasts. As the Pharisee in Luke demonstrates for us, we are not made righteous before God by our actions alone. And yet, this does not mean that fasts are unworthy. We should indeed wonder, what are these practices capable of eliciting in our lives? What is a fast anyway, but a self-imposed restriction which attunes us to God’s speaking joy in our lives?
In previous years I’ve adopted my own Lenten disciplines of “fasting” which have taken various forms. I’ve given up desserts, I’ve “taken on” the practice of writing letters to friends each day, and I’ve given up meat for the whole season. Even at my best, I must admit – like the Pharisee – that these practices risk being tainted by self-piety and self-improvement. This year I’m planning to take a different approach to Lent. The Episcopal Church has no strict parameters for Lenten observance, and yet folk practices have evolved around Lenten fasts. One of these being the abstaining from fasts on Sundays. The logic goes that Sundays are a “feast” day and are therefore ill-befitting of our fasts.
Every Sunday when we gather around the altar, we are recalling a “mini-Easter.” We remember the saving events of God in the world and thus we remember the hope of the Christian life. The subtext of the Eucharist is that even in the throughs of sorrow we are ceaselessly embraced by a resurrection reality. This year my Lenten practice is to embrace this resurrection reality and to observe the celebration of Sunday as a feast day. Each Sunday I will choose to claim this Easter joy in its manifold expressions rather than the countless competing pressures which seek to overwhelm daily living. As a Lenten discipline in a world emerging from COVID, a world tense over wars and threats of wars, a world choked by climate disasters, it seems more befitting to choose feasting on joy than fasting from it. The joy of Easter transgresses the world’s sorrow, and there is absolutely nothing arbitrary about this joy which comes to us.
The Lord's Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
Closing Prayer
Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
