Part V
The spiritual economy that governs, guides, and connects the three-fold practices of Lent goes something like this: first, after prayerful self-reflection, the typical targets of the energy, attention, and concern we give to ourselves gets transferred into other more worthy and needy areas of our lives, and second, the energy, attention, and concern we normally give to ourselves (whether casually or obsessively) we give to God and others in ways that are neither casual nor obsessive.
In prayer, we withdraw our energy, attention, and concern from ourselves and practice the presence of God. We create within ourselves for a time a sacred space where we can experience our emptiness, our own poverty and dependency, and our deep yearning for the soul food that alone can satisfy. Mind you (and mind me), it doesn’t necessarily mean the emptiness completely will go away today or tomorrow or while on this earth. But with courage and supportive companions, we might discover that the emptiness itself— if we can resist the compulsion to fill it— is not our nefarious foe but rather our faithful friend and traveling companion on this earthly sojourn.
Gerald May who was my teacher at the Shalem Institute in the late 1980’s suggested we try desperately to fill the spaciousness because we fear what it might reveal to us. He warns of the dangers of what he calls “the myth of fulfillment” in these eloquent but challenging words:
Most importantly, the myth of fulfillment makes us miss the most beautiful aspect of our human souls: our emptiness, our incompleteness, our radical yearning for love. We were never meant to be completely fulfilled; we were meant to taste it, to long for it, and to grow toward it. In this way we participate in love becoming life, life becoming love. To miss our emptiness is, finally, to miss our hope.
I don’t know about you, but honestly, these are not words I want to hear. I want to hear that everything will be filled NOW, TASTED now, everything will be FIXED now, resolved SOON, all BETTER and ALL better. Yet, I believe May speaks in wisdom. It rings true. And I find great solace and comfort in his words somehow, most likely because of my own incompleteness and radical yearning. I know that the alternative is a fantasy, a lie in the form of a warm-fuzzy religion or an anathemic version of the prosperity Gospel. I know that to live in faith does not guarantee “complete serenity and fulfillment” but instead insures that we won’t “miss our hope.” So despite its apparent flimsiness, we lean into life, into the arms of mercy, trusting the words of Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well.”
In fasting, we withdraw our energy, attention, and concern from our own physical needs and in and through a fleeting hunger pang or a growling stomach become mindful of those whose bodies are daily houses of hunger. The logic and hope is that by becoming even a little body-empty we might become more mindful, prayerful, and heart-filled toward others who hunger and thirst for food and for that which makes for a dignified, just, and abundant life. What, if anything, does it mean to us that as we process forward to participate in the Eucharist at Mass that we live in a world of plenty where 842 million people suffer from hunger and nearly 5 million children will die this year?
Once upon a time, the Christian community had a better understanding of the spiritual economy intended in the movement from prayer to fasting to feeding. The offertory of the Mass was a time for the community to bring forth to the altar not only the gifts of bread and wine grown in their fields to be used for Holy Communion but also any goods that could be used to give to those in the community and beyond who were in need. The sacred meal that takes its name from the act of giving thanks (in Greek eucharistia) is transformed by the community’s prayer and the movement of God into the giving of love and life to the most vulnerable and impoverished among us.
In almsgiving, we take the spiritual resources from our prayer and the material resources from the money not spent on food and drink or other activities from which we are fasting or abstaining, and offer them and more to those in need. The paradox of deep prayer and intentional fasting and abstinence is that they reveal to us that we are at one and the same time images of God, beloved and blessed, and hungry beggars, vagabonds in search of real food called Love, called Life, called the Embrace of Grace, called Peace that Passes All Understanding, called G-d.
To the degree that we face into and acknowledge our own spiritual hunger, to the degree that we become aware of and intimately familiar with the hunger and physical needs of others, to that degree we will feel the responsibility and blessing of living the liturgy beyond the liturgy by offering compassionate and just action toward those Jesus called not only the least of these but also friends.
To be made in the image and likeness of God is to re-present the compassionate presence, continual generosity, and liberating actions of God in our daily lives. The spiritual economy of Lent as embodied in the intentional acts of prayer, fasting, and giving to the poor, is intended to set in motion the incarnation of the reign of God whose economy is oriented toward the mutual enhancement of all as generated by love. The vision of Jesus is the mission of all of us who take his name. It calls us to participate in the divine life by helping to make God’s dream come true “on earth as it is in heaven.”
–peace good people
Dan