The Weeks of Lent in the Australian Imagination
by Anthony Mellor
1)
The wilderness is a potent image in the Australian psyche.
From the Aboriginal dreamtime to contemporary suburban life, the beautiful yet treacherous bush has been the emotional and spiritual landscape of our collective imagination.
Lent begins where all great renewals begin: in the wilderness.
We encounter Jesus struggling to discern his vocation and to hear the voice of his heart.
In scriptural imagery, the wilderness is understood as a place of investigation and trial. The wilderness remains in the Australian mind our centre and core. Yet only a small number of Australians live or travel there.
The same is true for the 'heart' within each of us. Lent is the opportunity to do some sightseeing of the soul.
The wilderness is a potent image in the Australian psyche.
From the Aboriginal dreamtime to contemporary suburban life, the beautiful yet treacherous bush has been the emotional and spiritual landscape of our collective imagination.
Lent begins where all great renewals begin: in the wilderness.
We encounter Jesus struggling to discern his vocation and to hear the voice of his heart.
In scriptural imagery, the wilderness is understood as a place of investigation and trial. The wilderness remains in the Australian mind our centre and core. Yet only a small number of Australians live or travel there.
The same is true for the 'heart' within each of us. Lent is the opportunity to do some sightseeing of the soul.
2)
One aspect of the story of the Transfiguration that often goes unnoticed is that Jesus, James, John and Peter were 'on retreat'.
They ascended the mountain to pray.
The mountaintop retreat becomes an experience of enlightenment for the disciples and for Jesus.
Most regular worshippers rarely have an opportunity to experience prolonged periods of prayerful renewal - the Sunday liturgy becomes the home of spiritual refreshment. A regular Sunday 'retreat' demands the opposite to daily routine: quietness, attentiveness and an deep spirit of communion. These qualities of every Sunday are crucial during Lent.
The mountaintop gave Jesus and his companions a sense of distance and perspective. Good liturgy serves the same purpose and develops a greater maturity of faith and a more profound sense of our baptismal commission.
3)
In the company of a Samaritan woman, our thirst is quenched with water from a well that never runs dry.
The woman who comes to the well at midday is the kind of person that 'ordinary, decent' Australians frequently belittle. After five previous relationships, and now into her sixth, this unnamed woman's personal history is a public scandal. This part of the story fills the pages of our glossy magazines and the talk-back radio-waves. Oh, how we love to be scandalised! Or is it prurient admiration perhaps?
Contemporary Australia is less interested in the second part of the story: reconciliation, peacemaking and the restoration of self-esteem.
Yet we thirst for love, acceptance, harmony; for a sense of worth and meaning.
Misguided attempts to satisfy our thirsts leave us like the poor woman: unsettled, insecure, returning time and again to the same barren wells. Now at last water that refreshes and renews us, a gift of God!
The 'spring inside us' reminds us instantly of our baptismal beauty and proclaims that we have become a 'new creation', washed, anointed and clothed in Christ.
In the company of a Samaritan woman, our thirst is quenched with water from a well that never runs dry.
The woman who comes to the well at midday is the kind of person that 'ordinary, decent' Australians frequently belittle. After five previous relationships, and now into her sixth, this unnamed woman's personal history is a public scandal. This part of the story fills the pages of our glossy magazines and the talk-back radio-waves. Oh, how we love to be scandalised! Or is it prurient admiration perhaps?
Contemporary Australia is less interested in the second part of the story: reconciliation, peacemaking and the restoration of self-esteem.
Yet we thirst for love, acceptance, harmony; for a sense of worth and meaning.
Misguided attempts to satisfy our thirsts leave us like the poor woman: unsettled, insecure, returning time and again to the same barren wells. Now at last water that refreshes and renews us, a gift of God!
The 'spring inside us' reminds us instantly of our baptismal beauty and proclaims that we have become a 'new creation', washed, anointed and clothed in Christ.
4) The man born blind takes a journey from night to day, from darkness to light.
The story has the power to open our eyes to different horizons, perhaps not so much the horizons of beach and desert, as the interior horizon of the soul. We travel out of our heart of darkness to enlightenment of spirit. Like moths at night, we are drawn closer to the Light of the world.
Conversion is a life-long endeavour, though this realisation can take a while to dawn on us.
5) Presumably Lazarus had a choice. He could have decided to stay dead, to remain in the tomb. And that's the crux of the matter.
Indeed, that is the crux of Lent. We can decide to stay the way we are. At least, we know what to expect if we maintain the status quo.
Yet standing on the threshold of Easter, we are called forth 'from sin's dark tomb' to experience a new and more abundant life.
6)
Passion is understood in the Australian mind as the attitude and spirit of winners. We are told often enough that our sport stars succeed because they have 'passion'. But the passion of our culture and the Passion of the last Sunday of Lent lead us in two different directions. Jesus' passion is a surrender, a surrendering in trust and in love to that which can only be hoped for.
Death is a path into the unknown and unknowable. Resurrection necessarily lies on the other side of dying.
Our own liturgical assembly is its most powerful symbol.
Passion is the wife who remains patient and faithful to her husband with Alzheimer's; it is the widower silently mourning the death of his life-long partner; it is the marriage on the brink of separation; it is the attentive parental care for a disabled child; it is the awkward adolescent struggle to find identity. Passion is also the newly-married couple full of hope and optimism, the familiar laugh of a friend, the dry, battle-hardened chuckle of the old.
Death and resurrection are all around us.
7)
On each Aussie Sunday in Lent, we celebrate that our fleeting lives are placed against the backdrop of eternity.
These days on the road towards Easter's great story are an opportunity too good to miss.
Passion is understood in the Australian mind as the attitude and spirit of winners. We are told often enough that our sport stars succeed because they have 'passion'. But the passion of our culture and the Passion of the last Sunday of Lent lead us in two different directions. Jesus' passion is a surrender, a surrendering in trust and in love to that which can only be hoped for.
Death is a path into the unknown and unknowable. Resurrection necessarily lies on the other side of dying.
Our own liturgical assembly is its most powerful symbol.
Passion is the wife who remains patient and faithful to her husband with Alzheimer's; it is the widower silently mourning the death of his life-long partner; it is the marriage on the brink of separation; it is the attentive parental care for a disabled child; it is the awkward adolescent struggle to find identity. Passion is also the newly-married couple full of hope and optimism, the familiar laugh of a friend, the dry, battle-hardened chuckle of the old.
Death and resurrection are all around us.
7)
On each Aussie Sunday in Lent, we celebrate that our fleeting lives are placed against the backdrop of eternity.
These days on the road towards Easter's great story are an opportunity too good to miss.
Fr Anthony Mellor is Dean of St Stephen's Cathedral in Brisbane
Images from Unsplash and Pixabay. Used under license/with permission.
Images from Unsplash and Pixabay. Used under license/with permission.
This article first appeared in Liturgy News 34(4)