+Andrew: Conversations with the Primate
This is a transcript of Archbishop Andrew Hutchison’s web cast – February 10, 2005
Welcome to another segment of Conversations with the Primate. Once again my sincere thanks to so many of you across the country who’ve sent us messages in response to previous broadcasts and also sincere thanks to so many of you who have offered us hospitality and welcome as I continue my visits across the country.
Today I would like to speak to you about the season of Lent. As I tape this it is the day following Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent. There were services no doubt in parishes across the country to begin that and the Lenten invitation at those services was:
I invite you in the name of the Lord to observe a holy Lent. By self-examination penitence and prayer fasting and alms giving and by reading and meditating on the word of God.
That really in a nutshell sums up the best possible use of this season of the 40 days preceding Easter. The Lenten fast actually began in the earliest centuries as simply two or three days prior to Easter as a preparation for Easter communion. Over the centuries that has extended and become a much longer period now 40 days, echoing the 40 days in the wilderness of God’s ancient people and again the 40 days of temptation in the wilderness that Jesus went through. So a substantial season of 40 days now marks our preparations for Easter.
As a young man I think my perception of Lent was really a time when you give something up. What are you giving up for Lent, was the conversation even among my contemporaries and over time that meaning has expanded considerably.
Perhaps we could have a brief conversation about some of the elements of Lent as we now observe it. And I refer again to the invitation during the Ash Wednesday service – self-examination, penitence, prayer, fasting and alms giving. Let’s pause there. Lent has become for us a time of preparation for the great vigil of Easter. A time for instruction for the catechumen preparing them for baptism during the Easter Vigil. And paralleling that, the faithful have come to use this as a time for their own instruction and in the modern church probably in your own parish you’ll find that there are special Lenten programs that add to your knowledge of scripture add to your knowledge of walking the Christian way instep with those who are preparing for baptism at the vigil. And then at the vigil on Holy Saturday before Easter the whole congregation, you included, will be given an opportunity to renew your baptismal covenant. So it’s a time for study, for self-examination – How am doing on my Christian walk? Am I learning and growing in the apostles teaching and fellowship? It’s a time for penitence and that’s symbolized in the Ash Wednesday rite by the sign of ashes a kind of act of self-mortification when we remember that we are ultimately of the dust of the earth and will return to dust. It’s a time for penitence for asking forgiveness for repentance for the ways in which we have disappointed ourselves, disappointed God and disappointed one another. It’s a time for prayer and that’s linked with fasting. You will notice that in the Old Testament there are many high points where fasting proceeded a truly important encounter with God. Moses fasted before going up the mountain to receive the tablets of the 10 Commandments. Elijah fasted before an amazing manifestation of God himself and Jesus in the gospels recommends prayer and fasting as going together. What then is fasting really all about? Is it simply giving something up? Is it a shunning of the world as somehow evil and not good? Well, in fact the world is made by God and everything is made by God and is in and of itself good and to be enjoyed by His creatures. But, in order that we not be distracted from our ultimate communion with God we set aside those things that would take our attention and stimulate our senses and instead turn our hearts to God. So fasting and prayer are very close together. We give up our own immediate indulgences our own immediate wants in order to wait upon God and what God has to offer us.
Alms giving is connected to fasting and very significant fasting makes it possible to give alms for the forwarding of God’s work in the world. The most dramatic example recently was a Buddhist congregation following the tsunami who immediately set about prayer and fasting and as a result of that they sold their temple and gave all the proceeds of that to the tsunami relief effort. What a remarkable example of the alms giving that is made possible through self-denial.
Lent then is a season of opportunity. It offers you opportunities for growth in the Lord. It offers you opportunities for growth in your knowledge of the faith and of our holy traditions and it offers you an opportunity to look again at yourself. At the kind of person you are becoming and the kind of person that God would like you to be and to try to set that on the right track again. It is a time to remember your baptismal covenant and prepare for the renewal of that baptismal covenant at Easter time.
I pray that you will use these forty days well and that you will see them as a time of opportunity and renewal that brings you enormous blessings when we celebrate God’s redeeming gift to us in the Paschal mystery in His resurrection at Easter time.
Thank you for spending this brief time with me I look forward to more conversations with you in the future. God bless you.