February 14, 2023
Ash Wednesday
Friends,
I’d like to weave together a few strands of life here at St John’s.
A couple of weeks ago, Preston referred to Paul’s expression “I have become all things to all people.” He said, “Paul makes space for others; his method is sympathetic; he offers forbearance that serves the salvation of others.” In an earlier sermon, he talked in the same way about “kindness.”
At our Vestry meeting on Sunday, we were briefed with a document which ran about 80 pages, including financials. On every page, there was an opportunity to register St John’s DTK’s concern for the salvation of our community in every sense. The word for salvation, in the New Testament, harbours the sense of healing within it. It has healing at its root. And healing is an unfolding reality. Salvation is an unfolding healing reality and not merely a state of being down the road. A couple of weeks ago, we were reminded of the ACW Clothes Closet, ‘an act of love”, it was called, in DTK. Forbearance that serves the salvation of others. An act of love that serves the healing of others. Unfolding salvation.
Now that’s all about “our world and that world.”
But what about our world inside? About us and our interior world. If the emphasis of Easter might be on the world out there in every healing sense, then Lent might be about the world in here, the interior world of every person who comes under the sway of the Gospel here … and in other “heres” –other assemblies such as this one – elsewhere.
Traditionally, Lent takes us inward. It may take us inward as an assembly–preaching and the proclamation of God’s word certainly affect that communal inward journey–but I’m also thinking about the inward journey of the individual Christian. So, what sort of prep … what sort of contemplation … might be helpful for the grand Easter tour to come?
I once mentioned the time that my pastor drove me to the seminary in Waterloo to have me consider a career change that would eventually bring me to this moment. But there was something more going on with my pastor. You see, he knew that I was spending time with the Jesuits, the Loyola Fathers of Montreal, and I think he kind of wanted to keep me out of their clutches. But he needn’t have worried, because my girlfriend was doing a fairly good job of accomplishing that. Anyway, one of the things I learned about from the Loyola Fathers was about “desolation and consolation’. Those are words that are used throughout Jesuit history, Jesuit writing and Jesuit spirituality. Desolation and consolation.
Desolation speaks of interior unrest or disquiet or dissatisfaction. Dis-equilibrium. Sometimes, even, despair. Interior paralysis. “I just can’t deal with it.” “The world’s problems are so big.” “I can’t cope with it all.” I feel swamped.” Desolation is concerned about the world as it is. Desolation invites us to rummage around in our interior selves to tease out our strengths and those bits and pieces which may help us to soothe the savage beast, still our minds, to come to rest …
Consolation speaks of interior calm or stillness but the opposite of dissatisfaction is not satisfaction but hopefulness about the world as it is. Equilibrium. Hope. Outward movement. “I can do what I can do, and with others I can do more”. There’s an in-built optimism to consolation manifest as Christian hope. Concern for the world as it is yielding a vision for the world as it might be. Consolation moves us beyond ourselves. So…
How do we quiet the pangs of desolation into mere memories of disquiet?
How do we move from intimations of consolation to a full-blown exuberance toward God’s world? Two possibilities:
Thing 1: As we pray, so we believe. Lex orandi. Lex credendi. Literally translated, it means “the law of prayer [is] the law of belief.” This axiom is an adaptation of the words of Prosper of Aquitaine, a long-ago contemporary of St. Augustine. It speaks to the power of prayer to shape our belief but not simply our intellect; but the power of prayer to shape our whole being; to shape us as persons who take on the world out there with all its woes, with its joys and sorrows, both. But it’s not just any prayer, either. It’s liturgical prayer. Communal prayer. Our liturgy, the people’s work, together, lifts us up. It assists us in holding at bay the demons of despair. Thing 1.
Thing 2: Small step approach. This is something I got from training lay people to do pastoral care, as I did, in my parish, long ago. We take on big problems, small bits at a time. We don’t try to solve the problem of world peace. We just sort out that lingering fence thing with our neighbour. We don’t feel the need to tackle all of climate change. When that fuel-burning, gas-guzzling, smoke-emitting, stench-producing, noise-making law mower of ours comes to the end of its earthly life, we don’t replace it. Small step. We let the grass go and plant wildflowers. We’ll use less water and we’ll help our neighbour Earth to breathe again. Is that a little too granola? OK, think perennials instead of wildflowers. You get my drift.
Desolation. Consolation. / As we pray, so we believe; so we live. / Small steps. A Lenten concern for the world as it is & an Easter vision for the world as it might be.
“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
“Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
“Then our light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.”
Concern for the world as it is, a vision for the world as it might be; from desolation to consolation; our community prayer; small steps.
Silence
May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in God’s sight. And may the church say “Amen.” R/ Amen.
André Lavergne CWA (The Rev.)
Honourary Assistant,
Church of St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener