The Turning

For years I taught a World Religions course at a Jesuit Catholic university. Most of my undergraduate students came from homes in which a faith tradition, usually Christian, had shaped them. Inevitably, when we ventured out to the local synagogue or had a Pakistani or Indonesian medical student speak in class, my students would remark admiringly on the amount of serious practice they observed in a young Jew learning the cantillations of biblical Hebrew for his Bar Mitzvah or in a Muslim observing five times daily prayer even while swamped with clinical rounds. Often, they would realize that they had considered religious observance an obligation or familiar family ritual. The concept that faith might be intensely personal, about growth or transformation, or a wild, radical, engaging adventure was not on most of their horizons.

Lent is often about variants of traditional disciplines: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Wednesday soup suppers. Friday fish fries. Giving up some indulgence or an addictive habit. Making donations to the poor. Setting aside time for reading scripture. These are fine practices designed to encourage our ongoing reorientation toward the source and meaning of our lives. But in their familiarity, we can easily miss the personal urgency of the biblical invitation.

As we enter the Lenten season, the ancient biblical cry rises and echoes down through the generations: “ ‘Even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’ Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love” (niv). This passage brings to our attention once again the return and the deep seriousness of the turning. May we attend to it.