After ‘Abstract Lent’ there is a second risk, a ‘Formal Lent’.
Most of us see Lent as a time when we ‘must’, we ‘ought’, we ‘have to’. Fine, but what do we ‘need to’? Is there more to Lent than religious obligations and dietary restrictions? Is there a deeper truth beyond the ‘form’ of Lent?
On the Second Sunday of Lent the Church presents us the Gospel of the Transfiguration, “meta-morphosis”, etymologically to go ‘beyond the form’, not to change the reality but to reach the its deeper hidden truth, beyond what is visible, its form.
To see and live a ‘formal Lent’ can deprive us of its true gift – the experience of a spiritual journey whose purpose is to transfer us from one existential state into another. The quotations below by Father Seraphim, Orthodox monk of the Valaam monastery, Russia, can help us to re-orient our Lenten journey. + + +
Christians should be the happiest persons in the world. Because we are blessed to know the way, and what is more important, to know the Lord, to know His will and to live by it.
Everyone can do it but as the Holy Fathers say, all our troubles come from pride; if we would have humility then God would show us all his secrets because He loves us! All He wants is to bring us to Divine Life but He cannot do it without our participation!
Divine Liturgy is everything! It is our life! We die and we rise from the dead every day! Not only physically but also spiritually. It is not easy at all. When you know how the world lives and you pray for the world, we drink the bowl of grief and sickness of the world. It is not easy, not easy at all!
Lord have mercy on me, have mercy on your fallen creation! Lord help me to follow the same path, as all your Saints did through humble cry, confession and obedience! + + +
It is Lent, beyond ‘formal’ Lent! We see, we discover, we live.