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Morning Devotion for the Season of Lent
February 23, 2024
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.
Reading:
Most holy and merciful Father: We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have sinned by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart and mind and strength.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.
We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us.
We have not been true to the mind of Christ.
We have grieved your Holy Spirit.
Litany of Penitence: Ash Wednesday
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
There is no lack of material for confession. If we don’t feel the sting of conscience in the moment, we are regularly reminded now that there is no end to the number of wrongs retained in the record of the past. People have always taken advantage of inequalities; we waste no time in prospering at the expense of others.
It’s easy to assume, then, that this is simply how we treat one another. As Richard Dawkins has noted, it’s the inexorable way of the world: “some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.” And consequently, we can quietly concede that loving our neighbors as ourselves just isn’t possible and accept this with a shrug (hoping all the while that we’ll be among the lucky).
Even more, we can make the same confession before God, whose standards are impossibly high. For we are who we are, and even martyrdom won’t help us achieve what God demands. So, yes, God knows this and, yes, we acknowledge this, all with notable indifference. (After all, how many times have you muttered the confession without ever experiencing the slightest twinge of conviction that you must immediately change your life!).
What’s exceptional about the Litany of Penitence, however, is that it disrupts our rather pro forma confession by adding among those who are listening “the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth.” Imagine that! All who ever were before us. What does this recognition do?
At very least, I think, it shifts the direction of the gaze of our confession. For it is not we who, looking outward, address God and those around us. Now there are uncountable sets of eyes looking at us – and their gaze is not coldly objective, as if from afar and dissociated. Their gaze includes us in the whole drama of humanity from creation on. Their gaze sets us into a communion, intimate and personal, that isn’t so much about the rough and tumble of our present moment, nor is it about meeting the absolute demands of God, nor is it really about justice, which, for us, is the hard edge of confession. The gaze of the “saints in heaven and on earth” shifts our confession from our own acknowledgment of injustice to their witness to the triumph of the grace of love. Their gaze shifts the emphasis from judgment to compassion. For they see us as one with them, and we are drawn up into the redemption they already know.
And this shifts all the rest of the confession away from our failures to the gift of God’s infinite mercy.
Prayer
You come to us, O Christ: you are the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. All times and seasons are yours, and in you all things hold together and are brought to completion. Draw us by your Spirit into communion with you and one another and make us and all things whole and free in the full force of your deathless love.
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