The Glory of Lent

Photo: Budding flowers outside the entrance gate of the
College of Saint Benedict, taken by Sister Carleen Schomer

On Valentine’s Day, we received a pot filled with bulbs just beginning to sprout, daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and others. For several weeks, each morning, at our breakfast table there would be a surprise, a wonderful message of spring and resurrection. It was a delight, and a sign of hope. It was wonderful how something so beautiful and hopeful brought us a surprise. It was life-giving.

In this long winter when spring seems far away, in this long Lent when sometimes it seems an awareness of our sins becomes unbearable, there are many signs, or as one spirit explained it, “Sacraments of the moment.” Yes, as Rabbi Abraham Heschel calls it, wonder. Wonder, amazement, surprises abound if we watch for them. Again, as Heschel writes, "Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me."

Another image for Lent is that of the desert. As one who has a passion for the desert, I have found it a place of great wonder. Some see the desert as desolate. In some ways, that is true. But I have found it a place of wonder; be it the clarity of a starlit desert night where one can be drawn into the swirl of our constellation, the way all kinds of critters can survive and really thrive, and that oh-so glorious event of desert flowers blossoming. All is glory.

Charles Preble, OblSB