Reflection for the Third Sunday of Lent

Vanitas Still Life by Pieter Claesz, 1630

Entrance Antiphon for the Third Sunday of Lent

My eyes are ever toward the Lord; for He shall pluck my feet out of the net.
Turn unto me and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.

V: To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
In You, O my God, I have trusted.

(Psalm 25:15-16, 1-2)

In Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, two men – usually portrayed as homeless wanderers – expect the coming of a promised figure named ‘Godot’. Who or what Godot is, is never clear, and the further one gets into the story, the more unlikely his appearance becomes. Despite the earnestness of Vladimir and Estragon – who certainly believe – they wait in vain. What they get up to in the meantime, then, must take on the weight of giving the story significance and, while it is by turns comic and heart-rending, it is also nonsensical and circular, and, in the end, the audience cannot escape the feeling that it is probably meaningless.

As a centerpiece of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, Waiting for Godot was likely intended to prompt its audience into looking soberly at existence, abandoning questions of meaning, and treasuring the ordinary joys and simple pleasures of life. It is hard, however, to ignore the pitiable state of its two main characters without their proper end. In fact, the psychologist Viktor Frankl put so much emphasis on meaning, he determined that a lack of it was enough to kill his fellow inmates at Auschwitz before the brutality of the camp ever could. Man is looking for something, and without it, his actions, in all their variety, cannot really take the weight of reality.

Interestingly, this view is one that also appears in the Bible. In the book of Qoheleth (also called ‘Ecclesiastes’), the author makes a long study of life and finds that none of it can stand up to his penetrating glance; all of life eventually vanishes into the dust of time. “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” (Eccl. 1:2)

In the solemn season of Lent, we are asked by the Church to pare back our lives and come face to face with this reality. We are to take all of the relentless activity and weigh it in our hands, to feel the insignificance. “Remember you are dust,” we hear on Ash Wednesday, “and to dust you shall return.” The experience can be a melancholy one, indeed it can actually be terribly frightening to recognize how little we are and allow the hollowness to come to the surface. Without this knowledge, though, we can never know the true joy of Easter. The more we deaden this awful nothingness, the more we rob ourselves of the light of knowing we have a Savior, that - unlike the illusive Godot - He has already come.

This 3rd Sunday of Lent marks a turning point in the Season, one in which we begin to look to the treasure of our Baptism and slowly begin the upward journey with Jesus, who has come to fill our emptiness so abundantly that we are to overflow with His life. The Lord of Life has already come to give our actions the kiss of life and touch them with His meaning; as our Final End, Christ has come to resound as a bell in the open space of us and ring out joy. This week we begin to be able to turn our eyes away from our wretchedness and toward God, knowing that He alone will pluck us out of the desolation of our affliction, the net of our own plans and affectations and bring these wandering vagabonds home. Only by first looking at our misery can we know that, without Jesus, “we can do nothing” (Jn 15:5); only then are we able to give Him the total trust that faith asks of us and realize the true object of our hope. 

To Him we lift up our souls; in Him have we trusted.