The Lentiest Lent We’ve Ever Lented

That comment is showing up regularly throughout the world of social media. It could also be the longest. Our isolation is likely to continue through Easter Day and well beyond. Yet even in the midst of our current chaos, the Christian year moves through its own rhythms, whether we are allowed to gather or not. Each Sunday and major feast has its own prayer, its collect[1]. For many Episcopalians, Sunday will be the only time they hear or read the collect of the day. Those who follow the discipline of daily Morning and/or Evening Prayer may offer that collect each day throughout the week. Yet even then, the calendar moves on and we don’t use the collect until next year.

And then there’s the reality that very few Christians attend churches that use these particular collects, and fewer pause to reflect on what has just been prayed. Then there’s the new, current reality that we cannot, for the immediate future, gather for worship. Even those who join their congregations online seem to be about half of what we used to have when we could meet in a common place.

Because of this I suggest we might look back a couple of weeks and reflect on the collect for the Third Sunday of Lent:

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer

That first declaration may seem inaccurate to us. After all, we are doing quite a lot to help ourselves. Whether it is increasing our capacity for testing or working on a vaccine for the COVID19 virus or issuing stay at home orders or practicing social distancing or thoroughly and regularly washing our hands or turning our manufacturing from normal consumer items to masks and PPE and ventilators, we seem to be charging through to a solution even in the face of political maneuvering, finger pointing, wishful thinking and short-sightedness. And yet. Our failure to comprehend the fundamental connectedness of creation led us to this point. Whatever we can accomplish to ameliorate the pandemic will not change that self-sabotaging flaw in human nature that prefers to narrow our vision to what results in our own benefit. Our inventiveness has changed a lot of things in this world and not all of them for the worse. And yet, we can’t seem to change our behavior even when our circumstances demand it. We have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.

So the prayer begins with an honest evaluation of human limits. From there the prayer moves on to our need from our Creator, “keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls.” That distinction has echoes of a very unbiblical Platonism. In the Scriptures the body/soul distinction is very fuzzy. The Gospels tell the story of Incarnation, that God who is Spirit willingly embraces matter. Having already declared the material world “good” in Genesis 1, God now makes it holy in John 1:14: “and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Because of that fundamental unity of soul and body that makes us human, things which cause harm to the body also assault and hurt the soul and those things which assault and hurt the soul affect the body adversely. Perhaps that is why the prayer uses “and” rather than “or.” The two conditions are inextricably interrelated.

The prayer then concludes with the common doxology: “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen” It is through Jesus the Messiah that connection has been restored between creation and the Creator and so our prayers find their natural path through him. We are also reminded that this Jesus both lives and reigns. The unity described in the doxology is the model for the unity for which Jesus prayed we might be one as he and the Father are one. If a collect is a summary prayer, it certainly seems that the Collect for the Third Sunday in Lent summarizes our situation accurately. It might be worth our while to offer that prayer daily through this season of pandemic.

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[1] A collect is a prayer that isused in “collecting” the community for worship and also several elements of prayer and praise into one.