Do we really need Lent this year?
Do we need—yet another—season of withdrawal, discipline, and abstention?
Haven’t we been living in such a season for the last two years?
Since the global pandemic began, we have been deprived of birthday meals, wedding gatherings, and the comfort we receive from expressing our collective grief at funerals.
We’ve missed out on meals at restaurants, concerts and plays, hugging our friends, sitting at our favorite coffee shops, and receiving consecrated bread and wine.
Especially now as we are taking our first steps to emerge from our forced hibernation, do we really need to volunteer for six more weeks of deprivation?
Moreover, 5.8 million people have died so far from this scourge.
Do we need to be reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return?
Aren’t we reminded every time we see the headline about the latest mortality count?
What’s Lent got to teach us that the last two years haven’t?
Have we learned the lessons of Lent?
Has our forced deprivation taught us how to act more compassionately—or to value self-preservation about all else?
Have we extended more mercy—or more condemnation when others haven’t handled the way we think the catastrophe should have been handled?
Peter Chrysologus (5th Century) wrote, “Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. If we have not all three together, we have nothing.”
If we have not deepened mercy, compassion, or prayer through our enforced fasting, then perhaps Lent is needed after all.
Many of us have found escape from our loneliness and isolation through the constant noise of video streaming.
While temporary respite is good for the soul, trying to escape it by avoiding the pain of being alone teaches us nothing.
Pierre Marie Delfieux wrote, “Enter into the mystery of silence. Your goal in life is not to hold your tongue but to love, to know yourself, and to receive God…Authentic silence is the gateway to peace, adoration, and love.”
Lent encourages us to go deep into silence, to face head on our fear of being alone, so we discover that because we are in God, we are never alone.
Perhaps we do still need Lent.
The pandemic hasn’t been the only social crisis in the last two years.
Many of us became aware, as we never had before, of the continual suffering of our neighbors with black and brown bodies.
Oscar Romero said, “Our Lent should awaken a sense of social justice.”
Since the suffering of Black and Brown people is not yet abated, there is still work to be done.
Perhaps we do still need Lent.
Ash Wednesday Quotes for Sermons and Reflection
As we prepare for another Lenten season, beginning with Ash Wednesday, the quotes above, along with many others, have been collected into a resource for your preaching and reflections, applicable for the entire season.
I hope you will find them as useful for your sermons as you do your spirit.
Receive your copy by clicking the link below.
And if you’d like additional inspiration for your Lenten Preaching, get our Lenten Sermon Series Guide.