Friday, March 20, 2020

Lent in a Time of Pandemic



“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance…”

The Ash Wednesday liturgy in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (1979) calls the faithful to commence the 40-day Lenten season with these words. This calling embodies two essential processes: self-examination and repentance. There have been few Lenten seasons when such callings have been more timely.

Reflection and Only Then Repentance

The Latin verb pensare is the root of the first calling, self-examination. It means “to weigh out, to ponder, consider, examine.” It is related to the Latin word pendere which means “to hang, to weigh out.” The former is the root of the English word “pensive.” The later is the root of the English word “pending.“

Far too often the pensive, pondering aspects of self-examination to which we are called during Lent are lost in the emphasis on the second element, repentance, from the Latin verb paenitere, to repent, regret. It is ironic that many of us enter Lent with a penance of some form of self-denial already in mind without ever considering what such penance might be addressing. 


Any healthy self-examination occurs in the contexts of our lives – our relationships to families of birth and choice, communities, our nation and the world in which we live. One of the gifts Franciscan Richard Rohr has given us is an awareness of how egocentric approaches to religion often focus on the self, our shortcomings and our resulting existential angst about death and the afterlife. In a time of pandemic, we do not have the luxury of remaining focused on our selves alone.

It is hardly surprising that a medieval church obsessed with sinfulness would have created a rite of public penance as a means of discipline. The original 1549 BCP rite for Ash Wednesday opened with a homily which included “the general sentences of God’s cursing against impenitent sinners.”

When the Episcopal Church revised its prayer book in 1979, the exhortation provided at the beginning of this discussion was used to replace that homily and the call to engage in self-examination during Lent took its place in the rite prior to the imposition of ashes. Notably, self-examination precedes the call to repentance. We are called to consider our lives individually, as members of families, communities, societies and citizens of the world. It is only after such thoughtful consideration that we can arrive at the point of a meaningful repentance.

The coronavirus pandemic has made this Lenten season’s call to reflection and reexamination of our lives individually and collectively perhaps the most imperative calling in our lifetime. 

The virus has forced us to slow down the hectic paces of our lives. In a time when much of what we have come to expect from daily life no longer seems possible, we are having to reconsider many aspects of our lives that we considered to be given. The global nature of this pandemic is causing us to reflect on our inescapable connectedness to human beings – indeed to all living beings - around the world, a connectedness that is deeper than places of origin and nationalities.



 We have had to recognize that none of the walls we might build to reassure ourselves that we are safe can ever protect us from this most basic of life forms, a virus. Viruses have no nationalities. They cannot be screened out at customs. They belong to no political parties or religious traditions. They have no ideological orientations. They are equal opportunity agents of contagion.  

Aside from the nasty, sometimes lethal, physical effects, the chief pathology of this pandemic has been fear. It has led to hysteria in panic buying engaged without any consideration for the needs of others. Even worse, it has prompted denial among those unwilling to look the pandemic squarely in the eye. Sadly, too many of those engaging in denial have been those the public must rely upon to protect us from harm.

A Litany Made for Times Such as These 

Among the revisions to the Ash Wednesday liturgy in the Episcopal Church’s revisions in 1979 was the addition of a Litany of Penitence drafted by the Rev. Dr. Massey Shepherd, Jr. Reading these confessions of our failings, one would almost think the crafter of these prayers was writing them today:

Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work

For our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us

One of the unforeseen aspects of the pandemic has been the need to step back from our busy lifestyles, our lives of constant distraction which have allowed us to ignore the suffering of our world. It provides us with the time and the opportunity to consider our relationship to “worldly goods” and to reexamine our consumerist presumptions of entitlement to constant comfort. It reminds us that mere discomfort is never the same thing as actual deprivation.




We have an unparalleled opportunity to examine our relationship to our technologies and how our use of them impacts all of our relationships from our families of birth to our families of choice. Without diversions from movies to restaurants to shopping, we suddenly have time to think of others, to call or write one another.

The importance of our personal relationships has dawned on many of us as we find ourselves unable to visit family, friends and engage our communities in person. Indeed, one of the aspects of the virus that has been most painful to those of faith has been the shuttering of our places of worship. We are cut off from in person community.

We struggle to balance the need for social distancing with the risk of an even greater danger from social isolation. The virus arrived in cultures where an epidemic of addictions and suicides was already unfolding, the carnage of an atomistic consumerist culture driven by loneliness.

Our neglect of our relationship to the creation has swum into focus for many of us as we find ourselves unable to spend time out of our homes. But the downsizing of human presence on our planet has had some surprising results.

We are seeing dolphins and swans return to once fouled waters in and around Venice. From space the views of Wuhan, the major technological and industrial hub of China, have changed remarkably in these days since quarantines were put into place. You can actually see the ground there from space, no longer obscured by choking pollution.

With the rise of panics over basic necessities, ordinary people suddenly find themselves worried about their ability to survive. This is particularly true for those in danger of losing their jobs as businesses close, some perhaps never to reopen. The virus is providing unsolicited and unwanted insights into the existential struggles many working people have been experiencing for some while now as well as the many foreign refugees forced to leave their homes just to survive.




What might we learn from this time of pondering, reflection, examination? What might the virus have to teach us about ourselves, the ways we live, the things we value, the ways we see ourselves vis-a-vis others? And at the end of this Lenten season which may well be extended by a pandemic, what might we have come to realize is in need of repentance and remediation?  

Even in Times of Pandemics

At the end of the Ash Wednesday litany, the officiant pronounces G-d’s pardon on those who have confessed. Thereafter the rite itself ends with an exchange of the peace.

The Lenten season ends on a Good Friday which commemorates a crucifixion, but it ultimately ends with a resurrection on Easter Sunday in which death is denied the last word. The truth toward which all of this points is that G-d is with us in all things, life, death and everything in between.

Even in times of pandemics.

May we not squander this unparalleled opportunity for self-examination and repentance. In the words of the psalmist whose words we recite every Ash Wednesday, may our prayer at Easter, whenever that great feast day may end up being celebrated this year, be simply this:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me..”



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Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida


frharry@cfl.rr.com


hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com 


If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.


For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? (Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures)


Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)


 © Harry Coverston, 2020

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