Vigils Reading

A SEASON OF HEALING

By Thomas Merton2

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The Paschal Mystery is above all the mystery of life, in which the Church,

by celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ, enters into the Kingdom of

Life which He has established once for all by His definitive victory over sin and

death… Lent is then not a season of punishment so much as one of healing.

There is joy in the salutary fasting and abstinence of the Christian who

eats and drinks less in order that his mind may be more clear and receptive to

receive the sacred nourishment of God’s word, which the whole Church

announces and meditates upon in each day’s liturgy throughout Lent. The

whole life and teaching of Christ pass before us, and Lent is a season of special

reflection and prayer, a forty-day retreat in which each Christian, to the extent

he is able, tries to follow Christ into the desert by prayer and fasting…

In this way, for the whole Church, Lent will not be merely a season simply

of a few formalized penitential practices, half understood and undertaken

without interest, but a time of metanoia, the turning of all minds and hearts to

God in preparation for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery…

It is a time in which joy and grief go together hand in hand: for that is the

meaning of compunction – a sorrow which pierces, which liberates, which gives

hope and therefore joy. Such sorrow brings joy because it is at once a mature

acknowledgment of guilt and the acceptance of its full consequences: hence it

implies a religious and moral adjustment to reality, the acceptance of one’s

actual condition, and the acceptance of reality is always a liberation from the

burden of illusion which we strive to justify by our errors and sins. Compunction

is a necessary sorrow, but it is followed by joy and relief because it wins for us

one of the greatest blessings: the light of truth and the grace of humility.

Only the inner rending, the tearing of the heart, brings this joy. It lets out

our sins, and lets in the clean air of God’s spring, the sunlight of the days that

advance toward Easter. Rending of the garments lets in nothing but the cold.

The rending of the heart which is spoken of in Joel is that “tearing away” from

ourselves and our <oldness> – the “oldness” of the old man, wearied with the

boredom and drudgery of an indifferent existence, that we may turn to God and

taste His mercy, in the liberty of His sons and daughters.

When we turn to Him, what do we find? That “He is gracious and

merciful, patient and rich of mercy”…The purpose of Lent is…above all a

preparation to rejoice in His love. And this preparation consists in receiving the

gift of His mercy – a gift which we receive in so far as we open our hearts to it,

casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.

Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the

little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our

power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we

would not confidently await His mercy, or approach Him trustfully in prayer.

Our peace, our joy in Lent are a guarantee of grace.

2 Seasons of Celebration – Farrar, Straus & Giroux – NY – 1965 – pg. 113f.5