HIGH SPIRITS: Bring Back Lent
Aitken, Jonathan
HIGH SPIRITS JONATHAN AITKEN Bring Back Lent SH WEDNESDAY (February 25th this year) marks the beginning of Lent, the traditional Christian season of fasting, almsgiving, and penance. But do...
...Fasting was certainly not observed by the disciples (Mark 2:18-22) while Jesus was still with them, and Christ himself pointed out that what goes into people's mouths does not make them unclean but what comes out of their mouths (Matthew 15:11...
...He opposed the external man-made rules of Lent because they were "of no great value in the sight of God unless accompanied by true dissatisfaction with sin...
...In his Institutes Calvin denounced "the corruptions, nauseating absurdities and other superstitious observances" of Lent...
...The king lusted after her, committed adultery with her, and made her pregnant...
...By the sixteenth century Lent was well established as a period of fasting and penitence during the 40 weekdays between Ash Wednesday and Easter...
...Our science does not bring us near him, nor our art...
...Grace is a gift from God...
...The Church soon added various rules for Lent, such as not eating until sundown and then abstaining from meat, wine, or olive oil...
...Our pain may give us a taste of fellowship with him but it is only a taste unless that great creator of intimacy—penitence—is also there...
...And does it matter if they don't...
...Other religions have similar seasons for repentance, notably Islam whose six-week period of penitential prayer and abstinence, Ramadan, has always impressed me by the spiritual discipline of its adherents...
...Do we need a season of penitence in the Church calendar to help us attain it...
...So perhaps it is good after all to set aside a season for straightening our accounts with God, especially if we have overspent our sin credit card...
...Calvin was making a fair criticism about the Church's overemphasis on the externals of Lent...
...Here we are close to the real spirit of Lent, for Psalm 51 and the six other penitential Psalms (nos...
...The case for bringing back Lent rests on theargument that human souls need a period of repentance in order to undergo the change of heart and mind that brings personal rebirth or even resurrection...
...Although David does not say in Psalm 51 how long it took for him to be cleansed, purged, and restored to God's forgiveness, certain clues in the Book of Samuel make it clear that the process lasted at least several weeks...
...Bring back Lent" is hardly likely to be a popular cry in the age of self-indulgence, but perhaps a few ears may hear it and respond on Ash Wednesday...
...Our virtues do not bring us near to Christ—the gulf between them and his holiness remains unbridgeable...
...Rend your heart and not your garments," declares the Book of Joel in the classic reading for Ash Wednesday, which gave us the modern adjective "heartrending...
...Jonathan Aitken, a former British MP and cabinet minister, is the author of seven books, including Nixon: A Life...
...That concept, particularly when reinforced by a set of external rules and regulations, can bring us perilously close to the false doctrine that God's grace can be earned by man's efforts...
...In Merrie England of Queen Elizabeth I's time much effort was made to get 'round these regulations...
...To some extent his argument, if not his language, came to be accepted by most mainstream denominations in the late twentieth century...
...A reaction was bound to follow such artificial Lenten strictures...
...No one can know him intimately who has not realized the sickness of his own soul and obtained healing from the physician of souls...
...All we inevitable sinners can do is to position ourselves to be able to receive his gifts...
...These days most churches have largely abandoned dietary fasting rules, including, to some degree, Catholics...
...But repentance is a slow process, not a quick fix...
...My personal view is that contemporary Christians have gone too far in turning away from Lent and its deeper meanings...
...A close, prayerful, and intimate relationship with God brings the greatest of blessings to the Christian soul...
...As intended, Uriah was killed and David was free to marry Bathsheba...
...It can't...
...But how is it to be achieved...
...6, 32, 38, 102, 130, and 143 in the Psalter) are the classic Lenten readings for the observant...
...Yet the original Greek word for repentance, metanoia, has far richer meanings...
...But do twenty-first-century Christians in America take Lent seriously anymore...
...David's plea to God for mercy and forgiveness is recorded in his own words in Psalm 51, perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful expression of penitence in all Scripture...
...Historically the origins of Christian Lent are complex...
...The word in English has taken on the connotation of immediate remedies, such as saying sorry to God, making a confession, or in ancient times putting on sackcloth and ashes...
...Interesting issues arising from this subject go to the heart of whether penitence should still be an important feature in Christian and other religious observance...
...Few Christian sages have put the case for penitence better than William Temple, the greatest archbishop of Canterbury of the twentieth century, when he wrote: It is penitence which creates intimacy with our Lord...
...Yet apart from the words of this Old Testament prophet, there is scant guidance in this or any other Lenten passage of Scripture on how we should clean up our lives in a penitent way...
...In the last analysis, penitence and the observance of Lent are deeply personal...
...Repentance is crucial to Lent and arguably the best reason for preserving the Lenten tradition...
...It literally translates as a change (meta) of mind (noia)—sometimes as a change of heart and mind...
...MARCH 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 41...
...Wanting to have her permanently, David arranged for her husband Uriah the Hittite to be sent into the front lines of a royal army battle against the Ammonites...
...In about the fourth century candidates for baptism in the early Church were required to observe a six-week period of fasting which approximated the 40-day fasts endured by Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in the wilderness...
...Only when Nathan the prophet was sent by God to confront the newly wedded king did David recognize his guilt, confess his sin, and plead for mercy with true penitence (2 Samuel, 11 and 12...
...40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 2004 Shakespeare has one of the characters in Romeo and Juliet declare that "an old Hare hoare is very good meat for Lent," apparently an allusion to a loophole created when clerics forgot to put hares and rabbits on the banned list...
...All may, none must, some should" is an ancient Anglican rubric on this subject...
...By the seventh century the churches in Rome and Jerusalem had extended the fast by baptismal candidates to all members of the Christian community and established it as a fixed practice during the 40 days before Easter...
...At the time of the Reformation, many leading Protestants fired their preaching guns on Catholic Lent, notably John Calvin...
...One famous penitent who well understood the thoroughness of the repentance process was King David in the aftermath of his great wickedness...
...Of course sinners can repent of their sins out of this season, or on any one of the 365 days of the year...
...That seems a wise reform, for the JONATHAN AITKEN real point about Lent is that it is a time for internal penitence...
...This period coincided with the season of spring, for which the old English word is Lent, a term that dropped out of secular usage while taking on a new ecclesiastical meaning...
...Looking out from his palace in Jerusalem, David saw a beautiful woman called Bathsheba bathing on her roof...
...We can do this by prayer, by obedience, and above all, by repentance...
Vol. 37 • March 2004 • No. 2
