Yesterday around 20 of us at the Village I kicked off a silent, in-place retreat for my residents, and this was the intro. The quotes included were all included in the Lenten project I put together, which was essentially a printed version of LUX: the Podcast. Forgive the lack of links/citations here, if you want sources just reach out… although they should all be pretty figure-outable via a Google search.

And that’s pretty much all you need to know about that.

We started on Ash Wednesday in darkness, in sorrow for our failures to love well, but since then, every single day the light has gotten stronger, and our job over these 40 days has been only one thing; to turn toward that light, the light of the world.

In the first week of Lent we journeyed with Jesus through a time of hunger, exhaustion, and temptation in the wilderness; Diana Butler Bass reminded us:
Jesus… wasn’t seduced into replacing Caesar in just one more pyramid-structured Kingdom with a strongman at the top. Instead, he’ll go forth from the wilderness breaking bread with the poor and healing outcasts. He offered bread and safety, but did so knowing that such are gifts of God’s grace and not instruments to control others. “My kingdom,” he said to the Roman governor Pilate, “is not of this world.” His will be the power of love, service, gratitude, and humility. A “kingdom” with a table instead of a throne.”

In the second week we journeyed with Jesus to the mountaintop with his other close friends, and witnessed with them the incredible moment when Jesus began his “exodus,” and was transfigured. We were invited to be transformed, too, through our friendship with Jesus. Fr. Richard Rohr told us:
“Peter’s response [to Jesus’ transfiguration ] expresses an emotion that is described as being “overcome with fear or awe”—exactly what Lutheran theologian Rudolf Otto called the “mysterium tremendum” —wondrous fascination and attraction together with a stunning sense of one’s own littleness and incapacity, both at the same time! That is what holy moments always feel like: I am great beyond belief and I am a little dot in the universe.”

In week 3, we listened from the crowd as Jesus answered difficult questions about the urgency of faithfulness in the brief time we have in our mortal lives, and were encouraged not only to bear fruit, but to repent. Matthew Skinner said: “The parable [of the fig tree] clarifies Jesus' motivations for previously exhorting people to "repent." It's not that repenting will extend our lives or offer a miraculous shield against tyrants, superstorms, computer hackers and disease. Rather, our repentance will lead, figuratively, to our bearing fruit. True living is about fruition, coming to the place of experiencing God's intentions for us even in the midst of a sometimes menacing universe.”

But in week four, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we learned that repentance might not be what we have believed all along; that it is, as Jesus taught, about being found, about being open to and willing to accept God’s mercy; Brian Stoffregen gave us this good news:
“Repentance is more an experience of being found by a concerned seeker than the product of human effort. And its public sign is joy at the gift of new life rather than doleful remorse.
The father simply gives back his sonship as an act of grace.
The son accepts. He repents: he accepts being found!”

And he went on to emphasize that Joy is the emotion of repentance!
Joy on our part for being found, and on God’s part, celebrating that we have let go of our own lostness and turned toward Him, toward the light of Christ.

In week 5 as the light grew nearer still, Jesus showed us what that mercy looks like in action. He refused to condemn the woman who had already been condemned by her community, her own church. We were reminded that mercy—not judgment-- is the only faithful, response on our part for having been found by God. We were reminded that “Pursuing holiness without a profound experience of grace in our own lives produces hypocrisy and doctrinaire cruelty. Jesus came into the world to provide that grace through his cross, and to establish holiness, righteousness, and justice on the foundation of our experience of his grace.”

And this week, at our Palm Sunday Mass, we saw Jesus continue on his journey toward the end of his own mortal life, and continue to resist the very temptations that he resisted all the way back on Ash Wednesday. Frederick Buechner said it this way; "Despair and hope travel the road to Jerusalem together, as together they travel every road we take — despair at what in our madness we are bringing down on our own heads and hope in him who travels the road with us and for us.”

And now today, we step away; we spend time in silence with our God who loves to give us mercy and grace, celebrates even our tiny turnings toward home. Who only asks that we allow ourselves to be found and to join God in rejoicing over everyone who does that.

So much to contemplate in this season, but the to-do list is only this… to repent… to resist the temptation to rely on our own power… to refuse to judge others… to acknowledge how hard it is to live a life of mercy and faith, and to be found again and again and rejoiced over again and again, by our God, who is love.