Search
MEDITATIONS FOR LENT
-
I hope some of these passages can help in focusing the remainder of the Lenten days (after all, we’re almost half-way home)...
In down-to-earth Hebrew, to ‘meditate’ is to chew one’s cud. The familiar cattle of Hebrew existence proved a helpful image for the devout believer ‘whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders God’s law day and night’ (Psalm 1). The browsing cow nibbles constantly at the lush pasture and when it has filled its stomach lies down, regurgitates what it has gathered and chews ‘meditatively’ on its cud until the cud is fully assimilated. –William G Storey
Chew well, everyone!!
Bach might have been forgotten forever had not Mendelssohn discovered some monks wrapping parcels in music parchment—and gave the St Matthew Passion back to the world. ...As a matter of fact, the melody of his moving chorale, ‘O sacred head now wounded,’ was the melody of a popular street song of the day, but Bach’s religious genius was so great that it is now recognized as one of the most superb pieces of religious music ever written.
There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred. –Madeleine L’Engle
Let’s let all the aspects of our ‘secular’ life become sacred as well.
Let the mouth also fast from disgraceful speeches and railings. For what does it profit if we abstain from fish and fowl and yet bite and devour our brothers and sisters? The evil speaker eats the flesh of his brother and bites the body of his neighbor. –St John Chrysostom
Can we truly and fully fast in this way for the remainder of Lent?
We must remember the original meaning of Lent, as the ‘ver sacrum,’ the church’s ‘holy spring’ in which the catechumens were prepared for baptism, and public penitents were made ready by penance for their restoration to the sacramental life in a communion with the rest of the church. Lent then is not a season of punishment so much as one of healing. –Thomas Merton
Have we discovered where we need healing? Are we open to God’s healing touch?
Every lapse into despair is a mortal wound inflicted [on us]... [But] you can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God. –Symeon the New Theologian and Graham Greene.
Let’s keep despair far from us as we journey to Easter. Let’s embrace (even if we cannot understand it) the strangeness (and gloriousness) of the mercy of God. It begins and ends in the Upper Room—from Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday evening—from Last Supper to the gift of His peace.