Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

You may not realize it…but the beginning of Lent is just a couple weeks away! And chances are just mentioning the approach of Lent in the midst of this pandemic might have you thinking, “Oh…did last Lent actually end? Aren’t we still in the midst of Lent? Haven’t we given up so much already? What more do I have to give?”

Beloved, that feeling of loss, of austerity, of having to give up so much in so many ways is very real, very painful, and I want to name it and honor it. It can often feel like we’re running on empty, and when a well-meaning priest-type of person mentions Lent to us, we might very justifiably think, “Don’t talk to me about giving things up. What do I have left to give up?”

The good news, dear Friend, is that I’d like to invite you to consider that the Lenten fast isn’t primarily about giving something up, but more about asking: “For what do I really hunger? For what do I truly yearn? What actually nourishes me? What truly gives me life?” A Lenten fast is a way (not the only way, but a way) of asking, with our whole bodies, our desires, our minds, our souls, these very questions.

In our Office Prophecy this morning, Isaiah reports the words of God, who asks: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” And the question remains a live one: why is it that we’re so given to doing things, practicing things, falling into patterns of being and doing, which desolate us? Why do we spend so much time and energy on what inevitably devastates us and those around us?

Often, the answer is that we’re unaware of alternatives. We can even so fully identify with those things that destroy us that we genuinely long for them, identify with them, and think of their loss as a kind of death. We can misapprehend even good things in our lives and begin to see them as ends in themselves rather than paths or means or assistances to other, greater goods. And in seizing on these goods as ends in themselves, we make them burdensome, sources of affliction, idols we must serve. Our souls can feel like vast emptinesses because we’ve spent our substance on what doesn’t nourish.

When Jesus says in our Office Gospel today, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” this is part of what he’s talking about: we’re being called away from identifying with those things that do not satisfy; called to stop clinging to those things that desolate us and called to stop mistaking the clinging for living; called to understand every good in our lives (and our lives themselves!) as existing for the good of others; called to realize that we’re given life the more we give life, because the one who comes to live in us and inhabit our lives IS LIFE ITSELF. As Paul affirms, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:19b-20a).

This Lent, whatever your fast, practice, disicpline or rule may be, I urge you, Beloved, to think of it as a way of asking the question: “What truly nourishes? What gives life?” And particularly if you’re finding yourself emptied out by the days in which we live or by the patterns of sin and death into which we so often fall…if you realize you’ve nothing left to give and feel lost in a spiritual wasteland…consider giving up the wasteland. Consider offering your emptiness to the One, even Jesus Christ, who desires to give you his own surpassing fullness.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+