“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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