A Season of Lent, 2022
By Eric Stroo, LMHC
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:5
As I write on this Ash Wednesday, 2022, our world has endured the strains and divisions of a two-year pandemic; it is witnessing the increasing evidence of environmental crisis; and now it has been engulfed in a darkness of a different kind. The invasion of Ukraine casts a dark shadow across a continent, across a planet, in fact. It violates assumptions of sovereignty and civility that have prevailed for most our lifetimes.
The impact of these crises is more immediate for some of us
than it is for others. And yet regardless of our personal circumstances, we are confronted by a demand to face the seriousness of these challenges, to “get real.” The haunting incantation of Ash Wednesday—“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return”—seems to be a reverberation of the news, as we learn with each passing day of the destruction and casualties of war, natural disaster, and pestilence.
Our mortal lives are finite; the planet is increasingly inhospitable;
and the stability of our institutions cannot be taken for granted. A Christian response over the centuries has been, after Ash Wednesday, to enter into a season of preparation and reflection in anticipation of Easter. This time of preparation, the season of Lent, is an invitation to “get real.” The logic of it goes something like this: If Easter is to be an occasion of deliverance for us, from the consequences of our own failings—personal, national, global—then we must see unblinkingly and then actually turn from the evils that we have participated in. It does not happen easily. It does not come for free. The acts of will or discipline in the season of Lent come as a reminder of that. A timely reminder that freedom is not free. Our struggle to contain and combat the pandemic has not come for free. It has involved learning and sacrifice. Our struggle to contain and combat climate change has not and will not come for free. And defiance of the brutal invasion of Ukraine has not come for free—most clearly demonstrated in the courage and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people.
As an agency committed to the mental health of our clients, and by extension to the healthy thriving of our community, we at Samaritan Center are invested daily in this Lenten activity of “getting real.” It is in a sense our life’s work. We embrace the necessity of facing squarely, honestly, and lovingly the realities of our conflicts—internal and external—and grip that past hurts, fear, and anger can have in our hearts. In the hope of Easter joy, in the hope of deliverance from the darkness of these times, we remain committed to doing our small part in the healing and transformation of our community—one life, one relationship, at a time.