Calm down, not lockdown

Lent is a time to calm down, not lockdown, playing on the words of Nigerian rapper Rema’s superhit ‘Calm down’.

For many of us, Lent is a time to lockdown, get it under control – food, drink, liming, prayers, fasting, almsgiving – only for it to discontinue after Lent is over. We go into overdrive because we want to do penance to make up for our sins.

Nothing is wrong with reparation, but something is definitely wrong with overdrive. We make Lent into a diver who is down deep in the ocean and comes up too fast. This results in ‘bends’, muscle and joint pains, dizziness, and confusion. Spiritual bends leads to an unhappy and unfruitful Lent.

Why go through all the penances of Lent only to have everything flounder after Lent?

Lent is part of a continuum. We do in Lent what we should always be doing – praying, fasting, giving alms – only that we do so a bit more, with deeper intentionality, not simply to make ‘me’ a better person, but more than that, to make me a better soldier in an army where together we build up God’s kingdom on Earth.

Lent is therefore a time to calm down, to slow down, which is why there are many retreats in Lent. We can get so busy – as children getting ready for school, fulfilling the demands of the classroom, rushing off for lessons, spending an inordinate amount of time on social media, and getting insufficient sleep.

Parents too are part of the frenzy. Both prayer and churchgoing suffer. Sunday becomes a day of rest from the busy week, not a day to slow down and contemplate the deeper realities of life.

Lent is a time to discover that “secret place” (Ash Wednesday gospel) – the silence within, a quiet nature spot, the parish church.

In that secret place, we make time for a word used repeatedly by Pope Francis – ‘encounter’. We slow down to encounter God; we hear His voice speaking to us, asking us about our vocation: “where are you going in life?”; “what are you running from?”; “what about what I want from you?”.

Here we can fall into error. This is not about some spiritual high; my personal gain to make “me” a better person full stop. No. It goes beyond there to me partnering with others to bring about a “culture of encounter” (Fratelli Tutti). Christ, whom I encounter when I calm down, helps me to encounter others wherever they are in life, especially people on the fringes.

If Lent doesn’t make us aware of the increasing homelessness in the city, the youth who are unemployed and unemployable, the special children locked out of our education system, the loneliness of the elderly, the hunger and anger of the poor, and the sexualisation of the Carnival, what a wasted Lent we have gone through.

If it does not impel us to act to remove or buffer these social evils, we are guilty of turning our backs on “social friendship” (Fratelli Tutti).

Our Lenten encounter must lead us to care for creation too for it is from her we get palms, ashes, oil, wax, incense, wheat, and grape for the Eucharist.

Let us make this Lent a different one, a synodal one, a calming down to accept in gratitude the gift of encounter God offers us.