Lent, love, and our land

(first published in Cebu Daily News Faith, Sunday, 14 February 2010)

Snow covers many countries west and north of where we are. These lands, wrapped in ice, now wait for Spring, a season known in archaic English parlance by the name Lent, when the first shoots of greenery emerge from the ground, and the earth for miles and miles about strains towards rebirth.

This rebirth, in the Catholic worldview, comes from none other than the Resurrection of Christ, and Lent is a journey of the spirit towards that Easter newness. The 40-day Lenten season will begin this Wednesday, with the ritual tracing on the faithful’s forehead of a cross of ashes – remnants of burnt palms symbolizing mortality, decay, and sin that everyone needs to shed.

In the 40 days of Lent or “Cuaresma,” we will begin in spirit a journey to the arid, quiet desert, a journey like that of our forefathers in the time of Moses as they pressed towards the Promised Land, like that of Jesus' soon after he was baptized, wherein he grappled with and vanquished temptations to earthly riches and power, counterfeit honors, and fleeting pleasures.

These days will be a time of solitude and recollection: We will confront and strive to further overcome our spiritual enemies, our selfishness, the destructive agenda of the world, keeping in mind the land of the saved that God pledged will be our heritage. We will bear in mind what Holy Father Benedict XVI preached when this year began, that we cannot aspire to a new world while wallowing in selfishness and the habits of sin.

As Filipino citizens, Catholics can use Lent as a time to better discern who should lead the land, not just in government. Good leadership is required in families, among peers, in business, in the Church, in the academe, in every sector of society too. Lent in fact is a privileged occasion for all to claim being leaders and servants as part of their individual identities, to find in the crucified and risen God the grace to not shy away or flee in fear from the cross of sacrificing self and forsaking self-centered agenda for the benefit of many.

Self-sacrifice – God's sacrifice of his only Son – lies at the core of the justice that is the theme of the Pope's Lenten message. “What then is the justice of Christ?” Benedict asks. “Above all, it is the justice that comes from grace, where it is not man who makes amends, heals himself and others. The fact that 'expiation' flows from the 'blood' of Christ signifies that it is not man’s sacrifices that free him from the weight of his faults, but the loving act of God who opens Himself in the extreme, even to the point of bearing in Himself the 'curse' due to man so as to give in return the 'blessing' due to God.” (cf. Galatians 3: 13-14)

This is love. At its most glorious, love is spent, indeed wasted, on the beloved. In the great and holy season of Lent we are called to a greater discipline of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, because outside prayer we cannot be convinced to love without calculation, without fasting we cannot embody the convictions formed in us by prayer, and without almsgiving we cannot bring to perfection what we have begun to embody in our fasting.

We pray for love in those who will eventually be elected as leaders of our land, even as we pray for love in us, that we may serve and lead well in our own spheres of influence, that we may be healing members of the Mystical Body of Christ.

May the decisions of leaders – ourselves and those above us – be the fruit of well-formed consciences. May these be effected without corrupt interests. May these truly empower and not foster dependency in constituents. May the blessings of Lent be received by those who will be elected (God already knows who they are) into public office, so that their rule may go down in our history as the dying days of a winter of despair and the beginning of a fresh Spring of patriotism.