Weeding the Lenten Garden After a Season of Neglect

I’m not the best at caring for things. My books are worn – occasionally missing pages; my clothes are full of tiny rents and tattered hems. Even my body at 37 years is showing signs of my carelessness. Benign neglect, I like to call my approach to everything from gardening to hospitality. It works reasonably well most of the time, until I look closely. If I’m honest with myself I can see all the ways in which a more intentional approach might be healthier.

The truth is that when things are already healthy, benign neglect works perfectly. Gardens, bodies, books, and clothing don’t need extra care to thrive when they’re whole and happy. It’s only when the first tiny tear appears that it starts to catch on everything. Suddenly, the skirt is ruined, and the weeds have choked out all your pretty flowers.

Moving into Lent of 2021, I’ve got weeds aplenty to deal with. Some of them are hard and prickly. Others have deep, creeping roots that come back again and again after they’ve been pulled. It’s time to lay aside my careless habits and get to work.

How Did We Get Here?

If you’re at all like me, the long strain of 2020 didn’t create the weeds in your life, it just nourished them like sunshine after a long rain. My weeds sprang up, stronger than ever as the past year piled stress upon stress. Going into this new year, I’ve realized that my Lent has to be a strong one in order to heal and move forward. 2020 may not have planted the weeds, but it certainly helped them root deeper into my life. In many ways, my response to the stress of the past year helped them to plant themselves deeper within me.

First, it’s important to find the root. Whether the election, the pandemic, lockdowns, or protests brought you to your breaking point, it’s likely the root goes back long before 2020. It’s likely these issues were simmering under the surface, waiting for an excuse to come out into daily life.

Lent is often the perfect time to grapple with our weeds. It offers an opportunity to turn to God and fill our souls with Him. Churches (hopefully) offer increased opportunities to return to the Sacraments (particularly Confession), and there’s even still something of a cultural expectation that we’ll be giving something up for Lent. These 40 days offer a chance to renew – to become intentional about creating a healthier, faith-filled culture within ourselves.

The Invincible Summer

One of my favorite authors, Albert Camus, writes of his time in the French Resistance:

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

As Catholics, we know the name of our invincible summer. Christ is within us, living and strong, helping us to stand against the pressures of the world. There’s no denying that this year, the pressures of the world have been pushing pretty hard on us. They’ve taken their toll on our minds, hearts, and bodies. But we’re stronger than the world. We’ve embraced the Invincible Summer and He helps us to sweep away the weeds of this broken world.

Lent is the season that guides us into the joy of Springtime. In Lent we shake off the heaviness of the dark, cold winter and the burdens of the past year. The days are growing brighter, the night’s shorter, and Christ is calling us to join our lives to Him.

Moving On

Last year, our fasting season was shaken by church closings and lost Sacraments. Many of us even greeted Easter – the high point of the Christian year, without the Liturgy that gives form to our faith. Those of us who were able to participate in the Easter liturgy did so fully conscious of the abandonment our brothers and sisters faced around the world. But Christ the Invincible Summer remained, and a year later now we are stepping with Him into a new Lent.

This year, we have the opportunity to do something new in our season of renewal. After a year of meeting our failings up close, we’re ready to move on. We’ve seen ourselves bicker over scraps of fabric and people we’ve never met; and watched helplessly as friends and family canceled family gathering because of arguments over politics, race, and responses to the pandemic. Maybe we’ve even lashed out over these issues ourselves.

We can’t pretend that we’re out of the woods yet. 2021 is turning out to be every bit as contentious as the year before. But if we unite ourselves to the Invincible Summer this Lent, then we can reshape our interior life until it resembles the peace of Christ.

Advice for a Weed-Free Lent

It feels like the world is pressing in all around us at times, doesn’t it? So how can we push back and reclaim our hearts from the weeds that have overtaken them?

Everyone’s circumstances are different, but there are a few general steps we can take.

Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving

The three pillars of Lent are there for a reason. Without them, your Lent is incomplete. Last year, when the drama of the pandemic struck our churches, so many Catholics abandoned their Lenten devotions. We assumed the burdens of the world instead of sharing the cross of Christ. But this year, we’re stepping into Lent prepared. We know that this year is continuing the challenges of the last one. So stepping into this Lent, we need to choose our penances with open eyes.

Make sure that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are consistent aspects of your Lenten practice. In our family, we practice the traditional Byzantine fast, incorporate traditional Marian devotions, and give time to various ministries during the Lenten season.

Embrace Ritual Personally and Liturgically

Ritual is one of the greatest joys of the Lenten season. In church, we have the Stations of the Cross, the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gift (in the East), and increased opportunities for Confession. At home, we often use this season to break bad habits and replace them with good ones.

Lent is the season to shake off those lazy, lockdown habits! Create a simple, nourishing morning routine; cut out social media; and fall in love with silence. Adding simple, tiny rituals into your daily life will help create space in your mind for God to speak.

Devotional Reading

The Catholic publishing world is full of Lenten devotionals. There’s one for every preference. This year though, I think we’ve had enough of divisions and partisanship. Instead of picking a devotional for women, for young people; focusing on social justice or family values; pick up something a little more universal.

I love the collected writings of the Desert Fathers, the Book of Daniel, and the Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi; but you could just as easily meditate on a book of devotional poetry, like Gerard Manly Hopkins’ or Rainer Maria Rilke’s. The point is simply to read something good, prayerful, and uniting.

The Long Preparation

In his homilies, my priest has continually emphasized the need to connect as people, not merely as mouthpieces for one viewpoint or another. But since the lockdowns began last Lent, we’ve been drifting further and further into isolation and argument. This deadly drifting leaves us all – as a culture – in need of weeding.

While it feels easier to put off the work for another, easier, year – Christ, the Invincible Summer is waiting to guide us through the weeds. If we let Him, together with us, He will tidy the garden of our lives and make each of us into an image of the beauty that “will save the world.”