From time to time, I will post odd thoughts as they occur to me. For those of you who haven't read the general introduction to Lent, you'll find it in the previous post.
The calendar year invites us to treat January 1 as the time
for fresh starts. However, it occurs to
me that Lent is really the season of fresh starts. The men and women of the early Christian desert
were noted for the cultivation of “compunction,” which they understood as being
“punctured” by a sharp sense of regret for their sins. St. Benedict summons up that tradition when
he invites us during Lent to devote “ourselves to prayer with tears, …[and
to] compunction of heart” (RB 49:4).
Compunction is a painful virtue not very popular these days. The picture of the ancients of our monastic
tradition weeping constantly over their sins is not very attractive.
However, it’s all too common for us nowadays to pack all our
own faults and failings—to say nothing of the faults and failings of other
people—into that bag of miseries we sometimes tote around with us day by day.
Remember “decluttering”? The same
ancients who valued compunction saw it not as a virtuous tote bag but as a tool
for freedom. They
reminded their disciples that every day is a fresh start. Leave yesterday’s sins and failings in
yesterday, they said. Forgive and forget
your own ill doings, failures, unkindnesses, insensitivies, etc.—as God does when we ask sincerely
and do our best, with divine help, to mend our ways. (For those of you who are Catholic, Lent is a
good time for the sacrament of penance.)
The desert elders’ advice reminds me of a favorite passage
from the biblical Book of Lamentations: “The Lord’s acts of mercy are not
exhausted, is compassion is not spent. They
are renewed each morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Copyright 2019 Abbey of St. Walburga
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