Lent: Suffering as a Path to Healing
*Picture by Christina in Big Sur, CA
Suffering is one of our greatest inroads to healing, a time of both immense grief and possibility. It can burn away patterns and behaviors that are not serving our greatest good, helping us see what is eternal more clearly.
Our current global health pandemic caused by COVID-19 is a time of immense grief. The virus is unprecedented and harrowing. Yet within it, we are catching glimpses of possibilities for healing:
The sky clearing, because there are less cars driving and causing air pollution.
Households managing their resources more intentionally, focusing on using what they have instead buying what they don’t have.
Families eating dinner together instead of rushing to extra curricular activities.
People having time to cultivate creativity, instead of giving all of their productivity to their place of employment.
Warmer interactions with people you may not have taken the time to talk to like baristas, grocery store clerks, or coworkers.
Reconnecting with loved ones who are far away.
Staying home long enough to clean out clutter, plant gardens, and prepare your own meals.
As we accept “hardship as a pathway to peace,” we can allow this experience to transform us. Individually and collectively, we can grieve the losses and live into the opportunities for resurrection.
Don’t you find it interesting that this pandemic is happening during Lent and Holy Week—a church season observed by people all over the world, beginning in penitence and fasting, and ending in resurrection?
During Lent, participants fast by giving up something of value. Abstaining creates absence, a little space to meet and be met by God. People observing Lent may adopt a spiritual practice to facilitate this process like reading sacred scriptures in the evening, or praying when they get a craving.
For forty days individuals re-focus their attention on God, preparing them to come together for Holy Week. As a community, participants have undergone their own inner transformations, readying them to walk with Jesus in his suffering and receive his resurrection anew.
Every year, this sort of pilgrimage in local parishes is a reminder that Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection is a cycle we all go through—not just once, but throughout our lives. We are continually dying to old ways of being, which is often a very painful letting go of what we previously believed or relied on. But in dying to what no longer serves us, or is no longer true, we are brought more into real, eternal life. Our perspective gets bigger, our compassion grows, and we begin to resemble the risen Christ.
Going through these cycles of inner transformation allows our divine nature to shine through, bringing us into union with God and one another.
Perhaps we can view this global health pandemic as a suspended global Lenten season. It is a time of making difficult sacrifices that can call forward our divine nature. As we feel the discomfort of suffering it can turn our attention back to what is eternal, teaching us greater reliance on God, and fostering deeper intimacy with the Spirit. Our losses through the COVID-19 virus and our personal quarantines can be the suffering that transforms our thoughts, words, and actions, readying us for new life that is inevitably coming.