A Daily Lent

The Long Way Home Wednesday after the Resurrection – April 15, 2020 Spiritual growth does not come in a moment . . . in a flash of insight . . . or by responding to an altar call . . . or in an inspiring conference . . . or even in an act of kindness that creates good feelings within us. Spiritual growth is a long, long journey. We grow day-by-day, moment-by-moment, the slow accumulation of long-term openness to God’s work within us. I’ve known persons who expected transformation to come in a flash, and who quickly grew frustrated when they did not get the immediate results they expected. The spiritual life is a journey of our entire lifetime. We never come to the end of it. This is the work God is doing within us slowly, moment-by-moment. In the excerpt below, Evelyn Underhill talks about spiritual growth. We talked first of growth and then of service, but we must not divide them too sharply, for the two go together from the beginning. In a good nursery, children are ta...

Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – March 24, 2015 AMMA SYNCLETICA said, “If you start a good work, do not let the enemy discourage you. Your endurance will defeat the enemy. When sailors encounter unfavorable winds they do not toss their cargo overboard or abandon ship. They struggle against the storm for a while and then reestablish their course. If you run into a headwind, raise a cross as a sail and you will continue your voyage in safety.” [Bernard Bangley, By Way of the Desert , p. 119] By and large, I find that modern folks give up far too quickly. We don’t seem to have the willingness to stick with things over a long haul. My sense is that we are distracted, that we chase after the next “shiny thing” that appears on the screen of our brain, and that we quickly move on to something new and different in order to stimulate ourselves. I also find that this inability to stick with things reflects an existential boredom with life, a boredom with the way things are. We live...

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent – February 24, 2015 WHEN A BROTHER asked Abba Antony to pray for him, the old man replied, “Try to pray your own prayers.” [Bernard Bangley, By Way of the Desert , p. 22.] The perennial wisdom in prayer is to pray as you can, don’t pray as you can’t. In other words, there is no need to lean always on the prayers of others. And there is no need mimic the words others use in prayer. No one can pray your prayers. No one can be attentive to God for you. No one else can hear God stir your heart. No one can tell God what it feels like to be you. No one else can offer your family and friends to God just the way you can. Antony responded to this brother – harshly, it may seem to us – as he did because he wanted the brother to grow up. He was concerned for his brother’s becoming in God. He wanted his brother to learn the value and goodness of his own prayer. I’m not suggesting that we should never pray for others who ask for our prayer. And I’m not...

Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent John 7:1 – 2, 10, 25 – 30 After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. 2 The Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near. 10 However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 25 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.” 28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.” 30 At this they tried to seize him, bu...

The Third Sunday of Lent Luke 13:6 – 9 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’” In the short parable, Jesus encourages patience and letting things be. Spiritual growth takes time. We “become” over a lifetime. Spirituality is more about process than an event, even a series of events. But the human tendency is to take our temperature, to be constantly checking to see “how we are doing,” to pull up our seedling faith to look at the roots. Sometimes we use markers for the journey that are quite arbitrary . . . how someone else is doing ...