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+ REND YOUR HEARTS AND NOT YOUR
GARMENTS Ash Wed. 2009
These words from the prophet Joel sum up simply the season we are entering upon.
They are reminding us of what God is truly looking for in our lives whether as
monks or Christians living in the world. They tell us about hearts broken open
that we may find what we most long for, and how God steps into our lives. Let me
suggest that we find them again in our gospel though a little differently
stated.
When I came to Gethsemani some years ago, the words "rend your hearts and not
your garments" were posted in carefully hand written script on the door of the
tailor shop. They served as bit of leitmotiv or humor at the time, reminding me
not to take too seriously the severity of the life. And it is this that can
serve as a key to the deeper meaning of our Lenten season. St Benedict says that
the whole life of the monk should be Lenten in character but since not all have
the strength for this, at this time at least, the monk ought to make special
effort in his search for God. He’s to do so that he may look forward to holy
Easter with joy and spiritual longing. One wonders if he didn’t write this
because he saw so clearly that we easily forget what we are seeking amid our
fast, our prayer and alms-giving. He knew that God wants hearts broken and open
to a divine life that is "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in
kindness, relenting in punishment" to oneself or others.
There is a true story that I recently came across that touches right on this
inner transformation and I think speaks wonderfully of this season. It is about
a young Russian woman who with her mother, came face to face with the enemy of
Russia back in 1941. Some 20,000 German prisoners of war were being marched
through the streets of Moscow in a single column. The pavements were cordoned
off by soldiers and police. The watching crowd was made up mostly of women who
had suffered greatly from the war, every one of them having lost a father,
husband, brother or son killed by the Germans. Their gaze was one of hatred in
the direction of the oncoming prisoners. The Russian generals marched at the
head, their whole demeanor a show of superiority. The women stood with clenched
fists, the soldiers and policemen had all they could do to hold them back. Then
something happened.
As these German soldiers, thin, unshaven, wearing dirty, bloodstained bandages,
hobbling on crutches or leaning on the shoulders of their comrades marched with
their heads down, the street became silent, the only sound was the shuffling of
boots and the thumping of crutches. Then an elderly woman in broken-down boots
pushed herself forward and touched a policeman’s shoulder, saying "Let me
through." Something about her made him step back and she went up to the column,
took from inside her coat something wrapped in a colored cloth, a crust of black
bread. She pushed it awkwardly into the pocket of a prisoner, one so exhausted
that he was tottering on his feet. Suddenly from every side women were running
toward the soldiers, pushing into their hands bread, cigarettes, whatever they
had. The prisoners suddenly were no longer enemies but fellow human beings..
God had broken through in the heart of this elderly woman and then in many
others who saw the foolishness of the hatred in their hearts. What our fasting,
our intensified prayer and almsgiving are to do for us is to allow the goodness
and kindness of God to penetrate those hardened parts of ourselves so as to find
new ways of expressing itself to all around us. When Jesus tells us that when we
give alms not to let our left hand know what our right hand is doing, or that
when we pray, to go to our inner room and to pray in secret, or that when we
fast, not to appear gloomy like the hypocrites but to hide our struggle, he is
inviting us into that secret and hidden places of our hearts where God is
pleased to be. He is inviting us into that place where the elderly Russian woman
was faced with her enemy and turned from hatred, allowing her own heart to be
healed and that of all those around her.
Isn’t this why marking our foreheads with a bit of ashes in the form of a cross
is so meaningful in the lives as Christians today, an instinctive recognition of
the fragility and incompleteness of the human heart. But it also reminds us that
amid all our human failure, fragility and even death, the love of Christ is
doing something wonderfully new. The ashes on our foreheads and our lenten
practice ground us in the humility so necessary for divine grace. In such
grounding, Christ’s own life becomes our food for the journey. The Eucharist we
celebrate becomes our very way of life.
Joel 2:12-18; 2 Cor 5:20-6:2; Mt 6:1-6, 16-18
Michael Casagram, OCSO
Abbey of Gethsemani
25 February 2009
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