Rev Lydia
Falling in Love with Lent
Mar. 05, 2025 15:57 Filed in: Commentaries | Spiritual Practice
Falling in Love with Lent
A Reflection by the Rev. Lydia Gajdel
I fell in love with Lent when I was in college, sitting quietly in a tiny, windowless, incense filled chapel as the Jesuits preached a theology grounded in God’s abounding love for her complex, flawed creatures. Something about wandering into the desert with Jesus and our ancestors made sense to me and continues to feel like a natural way for me to grow closer to God.
That is what we do every year as we enter into the journey of Lent. Stripping down the trappings of existence and grounding ourselves in the fullness of our humanity, the beauty and brokenness inextricably linked, so we may come face to face with God’s redeeming love for us. In Lent, we are given the gift of 40 days to recalibrate ourselves to the rhythms of our created being and who we say we are as Christians. It is important that we do not go straight to Easter. We do not jump to the good part and celebrate our redemption without wading through the muck for a moment. Because for the resurrection to happen, we need death. We cannot have salvation without first standing before that which we need saving from, that which separates us from God. It is a natural part of our very existence. Death and renewal happen every year as the snow melts and the world turns green again, as friendships fade and new ones form, as the death of a loved one cracks us open and ushers in a new part of ourselves we may have never had access to before. And so we spend 40 days peeling back the layers, experiencing our own brokenness, so that we may be able to truly relish in the triumph of our redemption.
Lent this year feels particularly poignant, like our human brokenness is on full display as we wonder silently and aloud how this is all going to get redeemed. When we confess our sins together, we repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf. We do not have to look farther than our favorite news outlet or social media cesspool to grapple with the evil of which we pray. And just as the world finds another creative way to embrace chaos, we are invited out into the desert, into our Lenten practice. It is because of, not despite, the world in which we live that we intentionally prepare, listening for God’s call through the cacophony of sound and taking another step closer to God and who God created us to be. Lent was never made for self-flagellation, but rather to name and examine the ways in which we are separated from God and to intentionally turn back.
During this time when the world feels big and scary for so many of us, when emotions run high and it feels like we spend our days fighting, fleeing, and fawning, we are reminded of the words and deeds of our faith. On Ash Wednesday, each one of us is invited to the observance of a holy Lent. The liturgy asks us to do so “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” In this time set apart, 40 days to wander in the desert, we are invited to be in the world anew, reconnecting with ourselves and our Maker. No matter what the journey back to God looks like for each of us as individuals, let us take solace in knowing we walk the road together.
A Reflection by the Rev. Lydia Gajdel
I fell in love with Lent when I was in college, sitting quietly in a tiny, windowless, incense filled chapel as the Jesuits preached a theology grounded in God’s abounding love for her complex, flawed creatures. Something about wandering into the desert with Jesus and our ancestors made sense to me and continues to feel like a natural way for me to grow closer to God.
That is what we do every year as we enter into the journey of Lent. Stripping down the trappings of existence and grounding ourselves in the fullness of our humanity, the beauty and brokenness inextricably linked, so we may come face to face with God’s redeeming love for us. In Lent, we are given the gift of 40 days to recalibrate ourselves to the rhythms of our created being and who we say we are as Christians. It is important that we do not go straight to Easter. We do not jump to the good part and celebrate our redemption without wading through the muck for a moment. Because for the resurrection to happen, we need death. We cannot have salvation without first standing before that which we need saving from, that which separates us from God. It is a natural part of our very existence. Death and renewal happen every year as the snow melts and the world turns green again, as friendships fade and new ones form, as the death of a loved one cracks us open and ushers in a new part of ourselves we may have never had access to before. And so we spend 40 days peeling back the layers, experiencing our own brokenness, so that we may be able to truly relish in the triumph of our redemption.
Lent this year feels particularly poignant, like our human brokenness is on full display as we wonder silently and aloud how this is all going to get redeemed. When we confess our sins together, we repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf. We do not have to look farther than our favorite news outlet or social media cesspool to grapple with the evil of which we pray. And just as the world finds another creative way to embrace chaos, we are invited out into the desert, into our Lenten practice. It is because of, not despite, the world in which we live that we intentionally prepare, listening for God’s call through the cacophony of sound and taking another step closer to God and who God created us to be. Lent was never made for self-flagellation, but rather to name and examine the ways in which we are separated from God and to intentionally turn back.
During this time when the world feels big and scary for so many of us, when emotions run high and it feels like we spend our days fighting, fleeing, and fawning, we are reminded of the words and deeds of our faith. On Ash Wednesday, each one of us is invited to the observance of a holy Lent. The liturgy asks us to do so “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” In this time set apart, 40 days to wander in the desert, we are invited to be in the world anew, reconnecting with ourselves and our Maker. No matter what the journey back to God looks like for each of us as individuals, let us take solace in knowing we walk the road together.