Each year, the Christian journey of Lent invites us to new pathways and to seeing with new eyes. As New Orleaneans, we embrace Lent with a little more creativity. After all, consider some of our Friday “Lenten Specials,” which include nothing less than garlicky aioli, cod cakes, artichokes, seafood gumbo, crawfish in high season and shrimp-all-ways. In our City, Lent sets the table for a food feast rather than for fasting. So, if not fundamentally about food or fasting, what is the invitation of this forty days in our school year?
Welcomed or not, the persistent and insistent pandemic has jettisoned all of us to new, unexplored and foreign places. Like it or not, our familial routines are being done differently, and our year continues to demand the limberness of a nimble athlete. Willing or not, we can feel as “strangers in a strange land,” (like the main character in a sci-fi classic of the same title) while traversing the new terrains of relationship, educational practice, and school community. This year, we do not have to travel to distant lands on our Lenten journey for it to find us. It is finding us right where we are. Like the Prodigal Father, it is waiting for our return.
To each one, I hope that your Lenten journey is an experience of finding Jesus right where you are; and finding His vast Open Heart in your silence or suffering, discomfort or disappointments, victories or trials. Together, let us lighten our load on the Lenten journey, face forward with hope for a new day, and find the “ground of our being” (Paul Tillich) in the infinite mystery of Christ’s redemptive unconditional presence at the heart of everything. That is the promise of Lent: peace, joy, and gratitude. These gifts wait for all travelers on the Lenten journey. See you on the path!
In CJM,