|
|
I was glad when they said to me, "Let us go to the house of the LORD."
Psalm 122:1
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
Genesis 1:1
"This is the day the Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it."
Psalms 118:24
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And he shall direct your paths."
Proverbs 3:5
|
|
|
|
Rector's Study
"HOW LONG, O LORD?"
Psalm 13:1
I have no idea why it is that this year my pre-Lenten reflections keep coming back to the notion of "lengthening." Do you remember that the word, "Lent" derives from the natural lengthening of the days, the increase of daylight time, that takes place during the observation of our season of penitence? Anyway, the idea keeps bothering me that maybe I personally need to lengthen my observation of the season. Forty days of fasting and prayer may be enough for some of you to worthily lament your sins and obtain perfect remission and forgiveness (see the Collect for Ash Wednesday, BCP 264). But as a trained theologian and moral thinker, I feel sure it will take me longer than that. It might take me the whole season just to "make a right beginning of repentance" (BCP 265)! So what do you say to a year of Lent, or forty months, or forty years, like the Israelites in the wilderness?
I can tell I'm not going to gain a lot of support for such an idea. Instead, maybe I should be thinking about the lengthening of some of the extra devotions associated with our Lenten observance. I could spend more hours in prayer or read extra passages of Holy Scripture each day or pray the Stations of the Cross a couple of times in addition to the Friday evening offering. Certainly such lengthened and extended devotions associated might do my soul some good. I wonder if they would sort of balance out all the time previously spent in sin and selfishness, if somehow I could make up for past mistakes by spending an equal or longer amount of time of doing something good to offset that which I have used in doing evil and thus be justified? Oh, I know St. Paul had a few things to say about the inability to be justified by works, but I seem unable to figure out how to lengthen the extent of my faith.
|
"How long shall I have perplexity in my mind, and grief in my heart day after day?"
|
Psalm 13:2
Maybe my confusion over the notion of lengthening is all wrapped up in the feeling that I may be running out of time, that life may be passing too quickly. Every time I pray Psalm 71, something about verse 18 tugs on my consciousness, "And now that I am old and gray-headed, O God, do not forsake me, till I make known your strength to this generation." I know that I'm not that old, but my gray head provokes me with the thought that I don't want to run out of time somehow before I have communicated to all whom I love the strength and goodness of the Lord that I myself have only barely received. Somehow I want to be sure that my life is long enough, that my tenure as your rector is long enough, that I am giving enough time to saying and doing the right things to prove faithful to my vocation as a priest, faithful to my high calling as a Christian.
But I cannot be sure. In fact, Lent challenges me to think of the shortness of my life rather than its length, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I cannot rely for the justification of my life on length of days or strengthened efforts are goodness in Lent or any other time. Neither can you. But together we can all learn as we begin again this season of self-examination and sacrifice and penitence that there is One on whom we can rely, and "his mercy endures for ever."
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Timothy P. Perkins  , SSC
Previous Issues:
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
Summer 2006
June 2006
Lent 2006
Advent 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
Summer 2004
Easter 2004
Lent 2004
February 2004
Epiphany 2004
Advent 2003
Easter 2003
Lent 2003
February 2003
Epiphany 2003
October 2002
|
|
