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We come, in a moment, to receive
on our foreheads the mark of the cross in ash-a reminder of our materiality,
that of dust we are made and to dust we shall return. It's a ritual action
that takes us to the very heart of the incarnation-of our belief in a
God who is made human, who comes to dwell with us, one substance with
us, fully human, just as he is fully divine.
It can be-and has been through our Christian tradition-a real temptation
to split the human and divine, body and soul, mind and spirit; to allow
the soul, the spirit, the divine to escape the restrictions of the body,
our materiality, the stuff and mess of our existence. But that is not
the way of Christ.
It was not the way of George Herbert either. George Herbert who wrote
in the early 17th Century, alongside others such as John Donne and Thomas
Traherne-who lived in an age that understood the body and soul differently-and
in ways that can help us, I think. For Herbert, the ingesting of food
represented a central place where God could be encountered. He was someone
who believed that the inward life of the self was structured and disciplined
by the attention to the physical substances that entered and exited the
body. The body was not to be dismissed but was indeed the Temple of God.
Food was central-and especially the Holy Communion-where God comes to
the human person by way of nourishment and strength. God enters into the
materiality of the person-into your body, into mine-and transforms us
as we eat and digest. The Eucharist is the ultimate feast, where human
being and God sit down and eat. And as we eat, we are changed, by degrees,
from glory into glory. God permeates our inner most being by the gentle
and nutritious Eucharistic feast, which gives us health and wholeness.
When we get it wrong, though-when we eat too much, or indulge our appetites
too much-then we can expect to live with the consequences: we can-in a
good, 17th Century and earthy way-be troubled with indigestion, with flatulence,
with obstructions-constipation; with ill health. Herbert likens sin to
flatulence-it smells, it causes social isolation, it's a sign that things
are not right within. It's a sign that the appetites-not just for food,
but for other desires and passions-are out of order. For Herbert, if you
are able to regulate your eating, you can also regulate your passions,
your desires and make yourself a fit meeting place for God.
Herbert did not want his readers to give up totally on our desires, though.
No. He wanted to see the focusing of desire towards God-so that we turn
away from sin and turn to Christ.
You can hear the same message in our gospel reading. It's you and I that
are caught in adultery-not literally-but we all get in a mess at times;
we do things we regret; we are found out; we are in the wrong. We are
accused by others-who are often no better than ourselves. In Jesus we
are offered a new beginning; the opportunity to turn again, to turn and
follow him, to go and sin no more. And good old St Paul-who knew more
than most about the temptations of the flesh-he knew that as a servant
of God he commended himself by showing how disciplined he could be, how
much endurance he had-through all those difficulties - dying, see we are
alive! Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, poor, to making many rich; having
nothing, yet possessing everything. Paul's desires are redirected into
the service of Christ, turned around, disciplined. The internal and external
turmoil is taken in hand and reshaped into something beautiful.
And so Herbert can speak of the practice of fasting as a feast. Here,
in a poem written at a time of real division in the Church of England
between puritans and Catholics, when to fast was something that the puritans
would have dismissed as Popish, Herbert commends it as something required
of us by Scripture and the Church. Something that leads to the sweetness
of clean abstinence, rather than the sour exhalations and sluttish fumes
of sin. Where fasting means to follow Christ into the wilderness and to
hope that Christ will turn back, and take us by the hand, and strengthen
all our decays. Where fasting enables us to control our faults and banquet
the poor-including our own soul.
LENT by GEORGE HERBERT
Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves
not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.
Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fullness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.
Then those same pendant profits,
which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodness of the deed.
Neither ought other men's abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.
It's true, we cannot reach Christ's
forti'th day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour's purity;
Yet are we bid, Be holy ev'n as he.
In both let's do our best.
Who goeth in the way which Christ
hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth byways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more
May strengthen my decays.
Yet Lord instruct us to improve our
fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev'ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.
I'm going to fast during this Lent-from
after breakfast on Wednesdays and Fridays until I break fast the following
morning. To discipline my stomach, and my desires, and to give me strength
to follow Christ, who knew what it was to hunger; who is to be found with
those who are empty today. Why not join me as we look forward, through
Lent, to the feast of Easter, the fullness and abundance of the resurrected
life that is promised to us?
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