The Riches Hidden in Christ: First Sunday of Lent
This year, for our Lenten reflections we will be looking at the Collects of the Sundays of Lent. The collect is the prayer recited by the priest at the beginning of the Mass, “collecting” us from our disparate lives and distractions and directing us to God. Reflecting on the collects can be a magnificent school of prayer, as we learn to pray with the Church, and to pray as the Church prays. It often provides insight into the spiritual fruits we should be asking for, and reflects on the mysteries encountered throughout the liturgical year.
Grant, almighty God,
through the yearly observances of holy Lent,
that we may grow in understanding
of the riches hidden in Christ
and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
– Collect, First Sunday of Lent –
One of the most intimate realities of our Catholic Faith is the fact that God has not kept Himself completely beyond the grasp of our human understanding. Instead, He has called Himself our Father and has made for Himself a Face, through which He can be sought. In Jesus Christ, ‘The LORD has made his victory known; has revealed his triumph in the sight of the nations…’[1] He has revealed Himself.
Since none of us has ever lived in a time outside of this state of affairs, perhaps the magnitude of that gift has become so familiar as to become a little pale in our minds, like a sickly child. To bring it back to strength, I often find it helpful to remember that, under the Old Covenant, no one came before the Presence of the Lord in the Holy of Holies except the High Priest on the Day of Atonement once a year and then, he wore bells on his garments that signaled to the others that he was still alive when he did so. Similarly, the classical Greek philosophy held that while God was the Supreme Being, he was ultimately incomprehensible to the human mind and so far superior as to be unavailable to him in friendship. The stark contrast of God coming to us as a little child and suckling at the breast of His mother should be something that not only gives us a little shake, but that warms our souls through and through.
God is close to us – so close that St. Catherine of Siena compared the soul’s relationship with Him to the communion between a fish and the sea.[2]
Now, it is true that He is always close to us; the fish is always in the water, or it could not survive – but He also wants us to know that He is close to us, Present to the very depths of us. He wants us to live that experience in the fullness of our human nature, and I believe the Collect for this First Sunday in Lent makes it plain that this should be our focus for the season ahead.
‘Through the yearly observances’ we are to ‘grow in understanding’. The Lord desires that our prayer, almsgiving and penance should be a means, the way in which we come to know Him more intimately; it is not a punishment or a test, but a purifying pair of spectacles that enables us to see Him as He truly is. As we love more by giving ourselves away instead of seeking our own ends, we see the Face of God more clearly and ‘the riches hidden in Christ’ become visible.
Even if we have been looking into the Face of Jesus for years on end, we enter into that gaze more deeply and we realize that the gift goes on and on. Anyone who has been married for a long time will tell you that the more you come to know your spouse, the less you realize you know… That person is in some sense a stranger and total knowledge is a horizon that keeps expanding. For some this might appear as a reason to despair, an exhausting and overwhelming work, but it is hard to imagine a fish that laments the vastness of the sea.
So, let’s walk the path of ‘worthy conduct’, live in the image of the Father, and pursue these ‘effects’. Let’s actually look into the Face that He has given us and cast ourselves into the love that goes ‘further up and further in’[3] forever. Let’s take this time of Lent to put aside every other distraction and confining demand in our lives, to open up a little space in our hearts so that we can see that He has already taken us into His.
*~*~*
[1] Psalm 98:2 (RSVCE)
[2] The Dialogue of St Catherine of Siena
[3] C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle, 1956.
