Opening doors – an unspoken task of Lent

Lent is often seen as a time to keep our spiritual houses clean, to do ‘spring cleaning’ for our souls, and to see where we need to readjust our sights so that our targets are truly set on the Lord and his will in our lives. All those are considered good in our classical Catholic spiritual tradition, and they are good spiritual exercises for us all. They put us in good stead to keep ourselves aligned onto “God’s beam”, as Fr Robert Barron likes to say.

Well, here’s my take on Lent. I have come to see that it is a time for opening doors. This is largely because as we grow physically in our lives, we seem to ironically close a whole series of doors that we think are either troublesome to keep opened, or are terribly frightening to see the things that lie on the other side of them. In retreats and with good spiritual guidance and direction, one is often led to the more difficult task of identifying these doors, and to open them. Often, it is the demons that supposedly lie behind these doors that become powerless once the doors are open. The interior life beckons us to do the harder task of finding the keys to these doors.

But the strange thing about opening these doors is that one cannot rush into the task as if it were a task to be completed within a predetermined span of time, like as if we were rushing to ‘beat the clock’. True spiritual transformation requires what is known as the ‘law of gradualness’. It’s a bit like physical development in a human being. The prima ballerina in a dance company has taken years of discipline and sacrifice to finally come to be able to dance with the kind of verve and panache that she does on stage. The violinist who plays with such vivacity and enthusiasm didn’t come to do that within a day, but only after years and years of drills and practices to make what he does now look so easy and effortless. The same goes for our quest for spiritual transformation. We are always a work-in-process, and are never quite finished with one Lent or one retreat. I believe that each of us awakens slowly.

Can we force inner maturity? Hardly. Those of us who are painful perfectionists can’t wait for the process to end. Each time we come to some groundbreaking point in our spiritual lives, we will inevitably see that somewhere in the background is something else that remains unaddressed. The problem lies in the fact that so many of us think that the goal is to get somewhere. Richard Rohr said it so well when he said that the goal is to be in harmony with the gifts that are already given, and that the goal is to fall in love with your life. No one who truly loves can say “I loved”, as if it were a perfected act that has reached completion. Love, as is life, is always something that is in the present, and ever evolving.

When the disciplines of Lent are seriously undertaken, with the correct disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, a metanoia or change is resulted. But we often want it to end by the time we celebrate Easter at the end of 40 days. Not only is this unrealistic, but also rather dangerous, because change that happens in a couple of weeks is only cosmetic at best. But true life-changing and spirit-shaping takes a far more longer time.

One of the most significant books on the Sacraments of the Catholic Church that I have come across was written by Joseph Martos, entitled Doors to the Sacred. I believe that it has come to be prescribed reading for many students in Sacred Liturgy, and it gives a detailed account of the historical and spiritual development of the Sacraments of the Catholic Church, which are really doors that open the disciple of Christ to a transformed life. As we approach Easter and the post-Easter season through the discipline of Lent, we as Church are also asked to journey with the Elect in their approach towards the Sacraments of Initiation. We mustn’t fall into the mistake of just observing this from a distance, but rather, we should as Church re-visit these sacraments personally, to see how much further we have moved past these doorways in our own lives. And we can often miss this opportunity when we choose not to participate at the Holy Saturday Liturgy, aptly called the Mother of all Liturgies.

If we don’t, perhaps what has happened to many of us is that we have simply stayed at the jamb of the door, and have hesitated to go in through the opened doors to a deep and real relationship with God, and find him, and to also find ourselves.