Lately, I've been wondering about what it means to do Lent in the Jubilee Year of Hope.
Right before Lent started, Father Scott mentioned this in his homily. He said he had the sense that Lent in the Jubilee Year of Hope would be filled with exceptional graces. Something about the way he said it made me take note - it hung in the air for an extra second, like it had more weight than the sentences around it.
I've been thinking about this a lot. Extra graces. Does that mean extra trials, too?
I have also been feeling really behind...like I am chasing the bus down the street. Ever have a week like that? It makes me wonder if I'm really making any progress. (Perhaps the grace is there, all the same, keeping me going.)
In one of my favorite poems, Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote,
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino
y al volver la vista atrás,
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar...
Traveler, there is no road,
you make the road as you walk.
While walking you make the road
and when you turn to look behind,
you see the path that you'll never walk on again.
Maybe Lent is always like this - a process, from the beginning to the end. There's a journey built into it. We start out with good intentions, maybe even with a fully-developed plan of what we are going to do.
This is the year I'm finally going to ______.
Then life happens, and unexpected curves in the road take us in directions we couldn't have anticipated. We have to leave things behind. We have to take other things up. As we travel the path, our luggage isn't the only thing that changes - we ourselves are changed. When we arrive at Easter and stand in the light of the resurrection, how will we be different?
Lent is the perfect time for a pilgrimage, and in this Jubilee Year of Hope, we are all invited to be pilgrims.
As we go, we don't go alone. Our prayer is never just our own. It is in the context of the wider Body of Christ, whose members travel together. We are of one heart. We belong to one another.
In the spirit of traveling together as pilgrims, we offer this community playlist for Lent as a soundtrack for the journey. May this mix of old and new songs in different styles and languages keep you company as you go.
Let's pray for each other.
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