By Julia Duin
C&C Adviser
One Wednesday morning in mid-February, I dropped by St. Mary’s, the only Catholic church in town. It was my first visit there and not a place I usually patronize, in that I’m not Catholic.
But they had something I needed that I couldn’t find anywhere else in Jackson that morning: the imposition of ashes.
Yes, it was the beginning of Lent. I wasn’t free that evening to attend an Ash Wednesday service at my own church, so I had to join the Catholics to have the opportunity to stand in line while someone smeared my forehead with a black smudge in the shape of the cross.
“From dust you came,” the deacon said, quoting Genesis 3:19, “and to dust you shall return.”
Later, I showed up to teach a class in Jennings Hall with the smudge still on my forehead.
There’s an unwritten rule that you leave it on all day, as a living reminder that you’re at least trying to be penitent about your sins. My students thought it a bit weird.
Liturgy and liturgical seasons are not well known on this campus.
The few times I have had students visit my home, I’ve given the gatherings themes that go along with the church year, such as Advent parties and, for a party that took place in January, I served an Epiphany cake.
When I asked students at the latter gathering which church season it was, only one knew it was Epiphany – the season honoring the Magi’s visit to Jesus – and she barely knew how to pronounce it.
We are now three weeks into Lent, the most solemn season of the church year.
It’s a 40-day season (not including Sundays) mirroring Christ’s 40 days in the desert.
It’s where you take stock of your life, where you resolve to do things differently, where you literally confess your sins to another person (my church puts announcements in its bulletin asking people to make an appointment with the priest to do this) and try to set all awkward relationships right.
It’s a time for meditating on Psalm 51, an excellent model for repentance.
“But isn’t it depressing concentrating on your sins?” one woman asked me when she saw the mark on my forehead.
It used to be, when I was younger. But then I saw it as a spiritual housecleaning needed to help unclog the drains and pipes and air vents of my heart.
Fasting became a time to bring unresolved matters before God and soak them in some concentrated prayer. I usually receive some kind of inner direction after that.
In the northern hemisphere, Lent is during a time of drab weather where it’s easy to withdraw for a season, to reflect and to reorder one’s priorities.
One is supposed to make more time for prayer and, in imitation of Jesus fasting from all food, to fast from something.
Lent has two days when one eats nothing: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Yes, you can get by on liquids for 24 hours.
Over the six weeks of Lent, I usually skip something I really like, i.e. desserts, because it is easier to mentally focus on things of the Spirit when you’re denying yourself various pleasures.
It is truly good for the soul to take a break even from good things in order to enjoy them even more when Easter comes.
People of this age live in their heads so much, which is why I like a season like Lent that involves my body.
At church, everything is draped in purple.
The drapes are switched to black cloth on Good Friday when most liturgical churches have services from noon to 3 p.m. to remember the last three hours of Jesus’ life.
If I can’t get to such a service, I’ll watch Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” or at least attach a simple yarn necklace containing a single nail around my neck.
When I lived in Houston, the Hispanic churches staged ‘Via Crucis’ (way of the cross) walks through the neighborhoods.
Church members playing the parts of Jesus, Mary, the disciples, Roman soldiers, Simon of Cyrene and others acted out – at stations along the route – the last few hours of Jesus’ life.
Everyone else was part of the crowd, shouting out ‘Crucify him!” during the scene before Pilate.
I loved these processions at my church, and they were quite evangelistic. Streets were blocked off; police escorts stood on guard; no one who saw us could fail to get the message that someone very important had died that day.
Such is Lent. Some of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible occur within its borders.
No longer do I fear that journey inward where embracing sacrifice and sorrow for my sins brings a richer life.
Julia Duin is associate professor of journalism at Union University.
