Category: Lent

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Leithart on Lent

Lent is a season for taking stock and cleaning house, a time of self-examination, confession and repentance. But we need to remind ourselves constantly what true repentance looks like. “Giving up” something for Lent is fine, but you keep Lent best by making war on all the evil habits and sinful desires that prevent you from running the race with patience.

Going through the motions of Lent without turning to God and putting our sins to death is hypocrisy, and few things rile our God so much as hypocrisy. “Rend your hearts and not your garments,” Joel says.

So: During this season, don’t just give up soft drinks; mount a concerted campaign against impatience. Don’t just put aside your favorite TV show; subdue your anger. Don’t just fast; kill your self-centeredness.

This doesn’t make Lent a season for gloominess and defeat. On the contrary, during this season we celebrate the victorious suffering and death of Jesus, and we should enter the season trusting in the Spirit of Jesus, who subdues our flesh and molds us to the image of Christ.

Lent is a season for joy also because it is a motif in a larger composition. The rhythm of the church year follows the rhythm of the Lord’s day service. Each week, we pass through a small “Lenten” moment in our liturgy, as we kneel for confession. But we don’t kneel through the whole service, and in the same way we don’t observe the fast forever.

Jesus tells us to fast with washed faces and anointed heads, that is, to fast as if prepared for a feast. We fast properly when we fast not only in humility but in hope; we keep the fast when we fall before God full of repentance but also full of confidence that our Great King will raise us up.

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Steve Wilkins on Lent

Fasting and prayer are not to be done because they somehow merit God’s favor. They don’t. Lent, like all the other ritualistic activities we do in life, can be dangerous. And we need to be very careful to avoid the problems we have sometimes seen in others: 1. Remember that though seasons of preparation and fasting are useful, observing Lent is completely a matter of freedom for Christians. Lent doesn’t make the participant automatically more holy or pleasing in God’s sight than the non-participant (nor should the non-participant think himself superior to the participant). The issue is not participation or non-participation, but growing in faithfulness to God. 2. Remember that disciplines like fasting do not subdue the flesh. That which enables us to die to sin and sinful desires is the Word and Spirit of Christ. 3. Remember that the point of Lent is not to give up pleasures, but to give up sin. Some get all caught up in giving up chocolate or steak for Lent. But the point of Lent is to give up idols. Just as it’s easier to write a check than it is to spend time in actually showing mercy, so it’s far easier to give up a steak than it is to avoid sinful anger or to break off your lusts. The point of Lent is not to give up chocolate; the point is to turn away from sin and grow in holiness. 4. As we go through Lent, we need to remember the goal of the season. It is not to be morose and sad or sinfully introspective. Rather, it is to be enabled to see the greatness of God’s grace and mercy toward us so that we are stirred to walk even more faithfully. Just as a time of sickness enables us to appreciate the days of health that we enjoy and just as the loss of a friend or loved one enables us to appreciate our remaining friends and family even more — so, Lent should enable us to rejoice all the more in the work of our Savior in suffering and dying and rising again for our sakes. Lent is like a journey but the end of the journey is not at the cross on Good Friday but at the empty tomb on Easter. Because we are united by the Holy Spirit to the resurrected Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death, we can face our own sins and weaknesses with faith and hope. In Jesus, we know that we are forgiven and accepted by God, and we have hope for real healing and transformation in our lives. And that in the end is the value of having a corporate season of repentance.

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Why must we continue the practice of Lent?

Schememann writes in the Great Lent:

It is a school of repentance to which every Christian must go to deepen his faith, to re-evaluate, and, if possible, to change his life. It is a wonderful pilgrimage to the very sources of Orthodox faith-a re-discovery of the Orthodox way of life.