Recently, I’ve heard several different people asking an interesting question about Lent in this time of pandemic: do we need it this year more or less than usual?
Some say less, because so much of this COVID season has felt like a kind of Lent, a time of deprivation from many things that we hold dear. C.S. Lewis wrote in the Narnia Chronicles about a trying time that was “always winter and never Christmas.” Often, this past year, it has seemed like it was always Lent and never Easter.
It may well feel to many of us as if every day since last March has been Lent, and that therefore nothing more Lenten is required or even beneficial. I’m reminded of the day when, as a young and inexperienced priest, I visited a frail parishioner in her 90’s in a senior care center. What, I asked her, would she be giving up or taking on to keep Lent this year? “My dear,” she replied, “when you get to my age, every day is Lent.”
Everyone will answer the question about our need for Lent differently. As for me, I need Lent more than ever this year. Why? Because this ancient practice gives me a pilgrim’s way, a set of practices with which to cope with my pandemic experience, and all of the other stresses of this strange year. Left to my own devices, I’m too tempted to sink into gloom, or overdo unhealthy comforts (I’m looking at you, Girl Scout cookies!). I’m likely to pull inward, into self-pity.
But Lent reminds me that I cannot be a disciple without discipline. Plagues have always been a regular part of human experience, and yet the Church has carried on with our seasons and our holy habits, even the penitential ones. Indeed, in such times, the penitence usually increased. For me, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (helping the poor) are the vaccine against my selfishness. They turn my attention outward, to God and my neighbor, and they remind me of my need to repent, and to be grateful for all that God has given me.
In recent years, it’s become fashionable to adapt the traditional Lenten practices, particularly fasting. And so, many people fast in Lent from producing excess carbon by being more environmentally aware, or from excess possessions by cleaning out their closets, or they fast from social media, and so on.
All of this can be good and useful (though reflecting, at times, a certain privilege). But I find myself more and more drawn to the traditional—some would say old-fashioned—Lenten practices: adding more prayer into my routine, making my confession, doing something tangible to help the vulnerable, and keeping an actual fast from food (no meat especially on Fridays, no sweets except on Sundays, and eating much less on certain days, particularly Ash Wednesday and Good Friday).
Throughout this pandemic, I’ve been encouraging everyone who asks my opinion to do whatever they need to, in order to get through it safely in body, mind, and spirit. That certainly applies for Lent this year. God will love us, whatever we do or don’t do for Lent, and we will arrive at Easter, and God’s welcome promise of forgiveness and resurrection, fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
But for me, the traditional Lenten practices bring an austere but sturdy comfort. Self-emptying is the pre-requisite for God filling my heart, and taking up the Cross is the necessary act before I can feel the strength of the angels bearing the load.
—The Rt. Rev. Poulson Reed
Sixth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma