Entering the Third Week of Lent
We are now in the in-between.
March is beginning to settle in, but as only March can. “In like a lion, out like a lamb” I remember hearing when I lived in Ontario as a child and March was cold and mud and melting snow before it was light and any warmth at all.
Lent is an in-between. We know that Jesus is headed to the cross. We await Good Friday and we anticipate Easter Sunday. We remember our frailty. We have known since before last Easter, the limitations of humanity as perhaps we had not seen before. In Lent we recall our own limitations and frailty and we hold in mind the frailty and limitations of the world.
There is an Orthodox expression that works so well for Lent and so well for this time in which we live. The word is “harmolype” and it refers to a disposition, an attitude, a way of seeing things. Perhaps the best translation is “bright sadness”.
And here we are, part of a world that is beginning to open up again. There will be joy, but there will be sadness, too. The losses can only be counted after the time of loss. We were frail before COVID and will be so after. We carry with us a “bright sadness” that helps us to know what it means to live. We are grateful for this life. Grateful for the love of God for all people and for this whole cosmos. Every bit.
From the Orthodox church;
The elder Paisios once said that for love to blossom in the heart, we must pray with pain of heart. In explaining this he noted that when we hurt some part of our body — our hand, for example — all our attention and energy focuses on where we hurt. So too it is a hurting and broken heart that focuses our spiritual attention. When asked what can we do if, in fact, we are not suffering and our heart is not hurting, the elder replied: “We should make the other’s pain our own! We must love the other, must hurt for him, so that we can pray for him. We must come out little by little from our own self and begin to love, to hurt for other people as well, for our family first then for the large family of Adam, of God.”
Amen.
