PARISH PRACTICE JOSEPH O’HANLON Listen, learn and love
As the Lenten journey begins, it is an opportunity to look within before we turn once more to the outer realities we are called to attend to. Fasting can help us to see ourselves more clearly
I
t is time for L-plates. Lent is a time for going back to driving school, a time for preparing, a time, in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, to cut a new furrow.
Lent is a time for leaning on ourselves, a time for readjustment, fine-tuning. Each year we prepare for Easter by listening, by learning again the things we know so well. Lent is a time for learning love all over again. Lent is a time for leaning on ourselves. Our old fasts, our fish, our one full meal and two collations, were not merely burdens to be endured, penance to be done. They were intended to remind us to go into the wilderness with Jesus and face the realities to which we are called. The physical discomfort was a twitch to spur us to look first within, then without. Leaning on ourselves for Lent is always a challenge to hold a mirror up to what we are and to see what we must become. If we are to come to Easter and enter into resurrection life, we must set aside time for reflection, for prayer, for re-girding loins. And it is not a task to be done alone. Lent is a community enterprise, a parish leaning on itself to rediscover that for which this people is chosen in this place and in this time, to what purpose this kingdom of priests is ordained, and to what holiness it is con- secrated (1 Peter 2: 9). Lent is a time for listening: a time for listening to every word that comes from the mouth of God; a time for lis- tening together, for we are in Christ, as St Paul insists, and thus he always addresses us in the plural. What is pro- claimed from our lecterns in Lent is a programme of transformation. The first Sunday warns that we cannot truly live by bread alone. Attachment to things stifles the spirit; every word that comes from the mouth of God lifts our eyes to horizons new and calls us to where challenge and contentment meet. Our second underlines the first. Listen to him, says the heavenly voice. We are trans-
figured by listening. The Samaritan woman, ordained to proclaim the Saviour of the world in the streets of her city, makes sure she knows who it is she serves, knows what husband now loves her to a new excitement, and for whom she leaves behind her bucket and goes to refresh her people with living water she has herself received. The man born blind is flinty and will not be gainsaid by those who deny the new light which enlightens his world and every world. He who was blind now sees; those who see but do not see are blind. With Jesus, darkness becomes light and, for those who have no ears to hear, no eyes to see, light turns to night.
TO DO
Highlight the Sunday gospels of Year A Organise a parish catechesis on these initiation stories
Listen and learn together
And all this listening will bring us to the tomb of Lazarus and to the command: Unbind him and let him go free! We are unbound and freed to give life to the world. To listen to our Lenten stories is to wrestle with God. Like Jacob (Genesis 32: 22-32), you (plural!) will come limping into new life, and new beginnings. To wrestle with God in Lent is to be blessed with a new name, to discover anew what it is we are destined to become. Lent is a time for learning. When we left behind the fish, we looked around to find alternatives. Many parishes have found the courage to set aside time for reflection, time for teasing out together the call within the words. What we hear on Sunday needs to be given a local habitation and a name. We are confronted with the
Word and the Word needs to be confronted with our con- cerns, with the turbulence of
our lives, the contradiction of our loves and the pain of our compromises. We need to learn from each other. To share the Spirit which imbues us all is to encounter divine presence. The word disciple means a learner, a pupil, one who sits upon the ground and listens to a teacher. Matthew reminds us that no pupil is greater than his teacher (Matthew 10: 24).Those who came and
come to Jesus are named learners, for the life of God is given us in the graciousness of our togetherness. We are schooled together in God’s classroom. The seed which is sown in our Sunday readings and homilies must be rooted in our common experience of God’s presence. In our togetherness – and only there – will the body of Christ be nour- ished and strengthened to become what we are called to be. There is a great joy in breaking the Word
together. On the road to Emmaus – the Christian story kaleidoscoped into an after- noon – hearts burned and recognition came. It was ever thus. Lent is a time for loving. Lent wends its
way to Calvary and beyond. Each stop on the way, each station, as an English pilgrim William Wey (c.1458) named them, reminds us of that on which St Paul everywhere insists. It is not that we loved God but that God first loved us. We are born by love into love, a love which endures forever. It is not given to human beings to bend
God’s love into divine indifference. It is not possible eternally to thwart God’s steadfast love, a love which, like no other love, endures for ever. The road to Holy Week, the way of the Cross, is a pilgrimage of love. Thus, when we set out on our Lenten
journey, we do so with the instinct of a true pilgrim. For the instinct of true pilgrims is to stand at the foot of the Cross, not over- hastily running to the empty tomb. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3: 16). Our leaning, listening and learning would be as nothing if love is forgotten. Christians need to sit down upon the ground and contemplate the wonder of divine love. Nothing, says Paul, can separate us from the love of Christ, for that love is God’s love and it will never be gainsaid. Lent calls us anew into that love. That is why it is a blessed time
■Joseph O’Hanlon, a priest of Nottingham Diocese, teaches at Allen Hall Seminary, London. His book Walk One Hour: Stations of the Cross for Pilgrim People is published by St Paul’s.
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