Reflections: Lent – community of God’s people

Sydney
10 March 2002

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Reflections: Lent – community of God’s people

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Reflections: Lent – community of God’s people

By Joseph Sobb, SJ

Lent is a difficult time for many of us. The Church makes much of this season but often this seems only to lead to despondency or apathy or both. There is a vague feeling of guilt that we ought to be “giving up” something or “doing” something, but the ordinary rhythm of our lives makes our choices seem either trivial or irrelevant.

Such feelings are strengthened when we look at a world riven by violence and injustice and apparently intractable divisions. Many, too, in our Church and nation are alienated or disillusioned. What are we to make of Lent in this situation?

“Personal conversion” is very prominent in much of our tradition. This has led to a strong emphasis on the individual and, perhaps paradoxically, has reinforced the modern notion of religion as a “private” affair – my relationship with God. There are frequent calls to repent, to frequent the sacrament of penance, to perform acts of selfdenial. Of course, these are necessary and praiseworthy.

However, they do not seem to be the answer. This is implied, for instance, with Project Compassion which has helped us relate our personal actions to the wider context of Christian service. There is more to Lent.

On Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of the Lenten season, three passages of Scripture are read. The first, from the book of the prophet Joel, has as its central theme the call to “turn to the Lord your God”. This call, however, is a call to Israel be a community. “Call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the aged, gather the children, even infants at the breast.”

Lent is an occasion for developing and strengthening the Church as the community of God’s People, in which all are to be included. We are more than a group of individuals, and become fully what our baptism conferred when we are gathered, when we act as a community.

Our Judaeo-Christian scriptures insist that God’s call is to fashion a comm unity, a People of God. The promise of God began with Abraham – “I will make of you a great nation, and by you all the families of earth shall bless themselves” (Gen 12:2-3) – and continues to our time, “From age to age you gather a people to yourself” (Eucharistic Prayer IV).

Perhaps a good ‘act of penance’ would be to work together to make our Sunday parish Mass a vibrant communal act. We are gathered so that we can see ourselves, despite differences, as a community which prays together, breaks bread together, dreams together, works together. The second Vatican Council’s document on the Church underlined this understanding.

The second reading comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, and presents the Apostle’s understanding of his role as that of “ambassador for Christ” calling on people to be reconciled. Christ came to serve, and hence his disciples, his Church, have that same focus. Lent, then, is not simply an inward, private season. It is the opportunity for us to become what God has called us together to be: a community which, by its life and its activity, signals a God who so loved the world as to give it the only beloved Son.

Fr Joe is academic secretary and teaches Biblical Studies in the Catholic Institute of Sydney; he is Superior in the Jesuit Community, Mt Druitt.