Mining the marvelous meaningful middle of Lent

Lent is framed by well-known, heavily-attended liturgies. The season begins, of course, with Ash Wednesday, and near the tail end there is Palm Sunday of the Lord’s
Passion.

In our Lenten observance, many folks focus on a good start and a strong finish around those special days. However, this doesn’t necessarily guarantee a fruitful Lent.

As the Cistercian monk Father Michael Casey has noted, “To begin a good work is, undoubtedly, a noble endeavor, but it is worth nothing unless we allow the grace of God to bring to completion what it has initiated.  This is true in any avocation and in every spiritual journey.”

So making the most of the middle of Lent may be a good way of bolstering our discipline and perseverance throughout the entirety of the season’s spiritual journey.

For men and women on the path to receiving Sacraments of Initiation this Easter, the Third, Fourth and Fifth Sundays in the middle of Lent (March 23 & 30, April 6) already have particular significance and intensity. The Order of Christian Initiation of Adults prescribes special readings (from Year A of the lectionary cycle) and rites, called Scrutinies, for the elect on these Sundays.
But there’s no reason why the rest of us can’t benefit in our own ways from those middle Sundays.

For this year’s Third Sunday of Lent, in the regular Year C cycle of the lectionary, we hear from the Gospel of Luke and the Parable of the Fig Tree (Luke 13:1-9).  In the story, the tree has yet to provide good fruit. But an advocate for the tree, a gardener, calls for more patience and care for the tree. This short wisdom teaching of Jesus is about us as the fig tree, and about Jesus as the gardener. It gives us plenty of meditation material, for the week that follows, about our fruitfulness, and about God’s infinite patience and mercy with us.  And, ultimately, in this Jubilee Year of Hope, it’s a parable to reflect more deeply upon hope.

The Parable of the Fig Tree, with its botanical imagery, also lands on our calendar just a few days after the first day of spring this year, and we are reminded that the word “Lent” comes from the old English word for springtime. How are we experiencing springtime both in nature and in our discipleship?

The Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 30) features the longest and perhaps most-beloved parable out of all of the approximately forty parables of Jesus: the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32).  The Fourth Sunday is also dubbed Laetare or “Rejoice” Sunday.  It’s a Sunday to reflect and rejoice deeply in the gift of reconciliation.  It’s also a time to ask ourselves, at this point in our lives, who we identify most with in the parable: the prodigal son, the father or the older brother?

The Fifth Sunday of Lent (April 6) presents a powerful drama against judgment in the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). The good news is the hope that Jesus brings to all of us, the hope of a new beginning in the reign of God, a new life that even rescues us from death.  At the same time, Jesus unmasks the bad faith and double standards of those who engage in scapegoating among the weakest.  

Along with the daily practice of some form of the classic Lenten disciplines (prayer, fasting and almsgiving), perhaps these mid-Lenten Sunday Gospels can help move us toward the overall goal of the season, which is to grow closer to God and others, being open to continuing conversion and preparing ourselves for Easter.

At the same time, we know that each Lent has as its distant echo the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert, with the difficulty and temptations therein.  It’s not easy to persevere.  But as the ancient desert father Abba Poemen once observed, “Don’t we see Job – how he didn’t give up his patient endurance right to the end, and that the things that tested him weren’t strong enough to shake the foundation of his hope in God?”

Msgr. Kerrigan is pastor of St. Joseph Church, Bound Brook, and a founding member of the World Community of Christian Mediation contemplative clergy network.