We often think that the purpose of Lent is to force us into new and unhappy obligations that often harden our hearts, and indeed certain traditions have taken people that route. But the biblical purpose of this season is to soften our hearts so that we may be open to the realities of the Spirit, to perceive what is the experience of hunger and thirst for communion with God.
Perhaps a phrase that summarizes best this motif is the phrase “bright sadness.” What we wish to see during this Season is to experience the glory of a Crucified Lord who does not demand merits from his children but whose merits are for his children.
There is a brightness to the Season that is manifested in Word, Sacrament, and Song and Confession that prepares our hearts to confess the sadness and misery of our sin and to find refuge in the brightness of God’s forgiveness. In the Season of Lent, we refuse to embrace the fragile and fugitive happiness of dead ceremonialism. Together, we embrace what Dostoevsky referred to as a touch from “another world.”
Indeed, on this sacred day, the First Sunday in Lent, we receive gifts from heaven, from another world; today, we are invited by God to the brightness of his presence even amidst the sadness of our fallen creation. In the Triune God, we find the glory of Christ, which evermore shines in our midst, that brightness that conquers death and hell, Jesus Christ our Lord.
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