This year during Lent, we are continuing our theme from Lent 2023 and inviting you to join us in a “revolution”, a revolution of contemplation (which is exactly what our world needs at this time).
Speaking to the Synod of Bishops, Archbishop Rowan Williams, the great Anglican scholar of the mystical life, said this: “… contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit. To learn contemplative practice is to learn what we need…to live truthfully and honestly and lovingly. It is a deeply revolutionary matter” [1].
Each Sunday, in addition to offering time for silent prayer after communion, we will suggest a theme for the week. During this first week of Lent, let us focus on Simplicity. In our reflections, we will be borrowing heavily from Catholic Women Preach: Raising Voice, Renewing the Church Cycle B, published by Orbis Books, as well as other sources.
In her reflection for the First Sunday of Lent for Catholic Women Preach, Christina Leaño quotes Pope Francis’ Laudato Si:
“The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become vast (Laudato Si, 217)” [2].
Leaño goes on to say:
“We are, as the old country song goes, ‘Looking for love in all the wrong places.’ Many of us get caught up in ‘retail therapy’ and get roped into the consumer culture, which then leads to the overconsumption of our natural resources.
The antidote, Pope Francis further says in Laudato Si, is that, ‘we need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that ‘less is more’. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, how ever small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfillment … It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack (Laudato Si, 222)’.
Pope Francis is speaking of a desert spirituality – one of simplicity – where, like Jesus we are dependent on the angels and God, and not on our own possessions. It is an invitation to trust. To simplicity. It is also a perfect invitation to Lent. To take up the ancient lesson that less is more. To stop and appreciate the small things. To be spiritually detached from what we possess. To not succumb to sadness for what we lack” [3].
What might this mean concretely for Lent?
“You might consider slowing down; not buying anything unnecessary during Lent, eating less meat (not just on Fridays!), taking more time to pray in nature, looking at the ways – such as by using our digital devices – that we distract ourselves from just living in the present moment, eating out less and instead using that money to give to a local charity or environmental group” [4].
This first week of Lent, as we focus our prayer on simplicity, let us each take up this challenge and pray about concrete ways that we might simplify our lives.
Citations
[1] As quoted in Groody, Daniel G. A Theology of Migration: The Bodies of Refugees and the Body of Christ. Orbis, 2022. pgs 302-303. Underline mine.
[2] As quoted in Leaño, Christina. “First Sunday of Lent: We Have Broken Our Covenant.” Catholic Women Preach: Raising Voices, Renewing the Church Cycle B, edited by Elizabeth Donnelly and Russ Petrus, Orbis, 2023, p 47.
[3] Ibid. p 47.
[4] Ibid. p 47-48.
