One line in the first reading at Mass last night struck me:
(T)he LORD, your God, will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
It’s from that wonderful narrative in Deuteronomy (30:16c) in which God is urging faithfulness, obedience, and virtue in the Israelites who are about to enter the Promised Land. Christians who came to America adopted the imagery for their own, seeing North America as a modern realization of a “promised” land. I think painters like Frederic Edwin Church seemed to capture something of that spirit.
During the homily last night (which wasn’t explicitly about occupation) this idea came to me: that the “land (we) are entering to occupy” is an apt metaphor for Lent.
For many years in my life, Lent was a struggle. Early in our marriage, my wife grew weary of my pouty approach to the Forty Days, so she suggested what a priest had told her once: treat Lent as your annual retreat. She pointed out that when I go on retreat, I keep silence, I stay away from tv and other media, I don’t eat in between meals, I go to daily Mass, I focus on spiritual reading. In other words, it’s not that much different from Lent. Except maybe for singing the a-word.
Lent has a lot of promise for me this year. I’ve been re-fashioning Lent from a retreat to that of an occupation. Not work-related, but in a manner of going to a place, and settling there. Also not like a military conquest; we can’t ever force our way into the experience of grace. We are often called to patience, calm, and trust. This Lenten occupation means being at peace in new surroundings, allowing myself to be challenged by new scenery, maybe a few steep climbs, some vigorous exertion, adapting to a new environment.
And if Lent becomes a fruitful expression of a new habitation, why wouldn’t we consider settling there permanently?
Catholic Sensibility 