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Lent: Teresa of Avila

Reflections of Lent in the Spirituality of Teresa of Avila

St. Teresa of Avila (d. 1582)  did not write explicitly about the season of Lent, but the Lenten themes that we have been exploring over the past month and a half weave their way through her writing. In this extended Lenten At the Table blog, I will summarize six major themes of her spirituality.

 

A recent book makes the claim: “We live in an age of the celebrity.” [1] It offers an alternative for our culture, which is to return to what I like to call “centuries-deep” teachings and insights from the great cloud of witnesses in the history of churches around the world.

 

One of those is Dr. Teresa, the first of only four women to be named a “doctor of the church.”  Teresa was a 16th-century Spanish nun, mystic and spiritual writer, and reformer of her Carmelite order.   She made it her mission to restore contemplative forms to this order in the Catholic Church. 

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Lent: Prophetic and Poetic Paths Part 2

Lent: The Prophetic and Poetic Paths Part 2

Poetic Path

Kathleen Norris frames Lent as a time of remembering or returning and embracing the rhythms of monastic practice.  It is a time, she would say, for contemplation and spiritual discipline.  As a poet and Benedictine, she sees Lent as a time to return to silence, simplicity, and a deep awareness of God’s presence.  She even speaks of the Lenten experience as something like the desert experience, recognizing that both dryness and struggle are part of the spiritual journey.  One of her primary practices is lectio divina, which is the slow, meditative reading of scripture. 

Following today’s blog, you will find an outline for the practice of lectio divina by which we allow the words of scripture to shape the heart and imagination, something essential in this age of distraction. Like Peterson, she would say that fasting is a practice of detachment, not merely from food, but anything that keeps one from being fully present to God, including our busyness, perfectionism, self-doubt, and abstracted faith.

Prophetic Path

Walter Brueggemann looks to the prophetic traditions of the Hebrew Bible and sees Lent as a season where believers are called to resist the dominant narrative, as he would call them, of empire: materialism, individualism, and injustice.  Therefore, he would say we fast not just from food but from the illusions of security, control, and excess that define our modern culture. 

One of his essential Lenten practices is simply truth-telling.  Lent invites believers to examine the lies that they have accepted about themselves, society, or about God.  This requires engaging deeply with the Bible, particularly the prophetic voices that call for justice, mercy, faithfulness, and care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in the land.  Read More

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Lent: Prophetic and Poetic Paths—Part 1

Lent: Prophetic and Poetic Paths—Part 1

Two of our final two portraits for Lent will be presented for the diversity they bring in their understanding and practice of Lent.  Walter Brueggeman is first and foremost a professor of Old Testament studies.  Kathleen Norris is a poet and spiritual writer, both of whom we need to listen to.  I have read nearly all their published works, so, I’ll call them by name:  Walter teaches us that Lent is misunderstood as a season for giving up.  He calls us to a practice of taking on. I first used his stellar book, The Prophetic Imagination, as the text for undergrads at a college in South Dakota.

A professor’s thoughts on Lent 

Walter teaches us that Lent is not just about giving up things (like fasting or self-denial) but also about taking on—practices that align with God’s justice and renewal.  He emphasizes that Lent is a time for transformation—moving beyond personal sacrifice to actively engaging in acts of mercy, justice, and prophetic imagination.  He turns our ears to Jeremiah, the prophet, who spoke fiercely against being neutral about God and God’s ways. 

 

Jeremiah gives witness to the real presence of God who has capacity to bring newness to otherwise broken social realities marked by violence, division, animosity, ethnic hatred, and hostile political partisanship.

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Lent: A Season of Darkness

In her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, Barbara Brown Taylor challenged Christians to pause and embrace Lent as a season of “darkness.” True, Lent comes in spring, perhaps just before Daylight Savings Time, but she means something far deeper when she speaks of darkness. For her, Lent is an invitation to explore the parts of life and faith that are often overlooked, avoided, and clothed in our doubts, fears, and uncertainties.

 

Like Peterson, Taylor is a realist who understands how easy it is to hold on to easy answers when faced with the mystery of our faith.  Her practices include silence and contemplation by which we dwell in the “shadows,”  where she believes God often speaks profoundly.  For her, Lent is reframed not as a season of deprivation and letting go as much as a period of deep discovery and growth by which we face what is within.

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Lent: A Season of Reorientation

Last week I introduced Henri Nouwen and Lent as a journey of the heart; this week let’s consider Eugene Peterson and Lent as a season of reorientation.

I met Eugene Peterson at a campus ministry gathering in the early 90s.  I took classes from him and consider him my spiritual father, though we had only a handful of times together.  Lent, as an annual remembrance, was, like other practices, a time for reorienting one’s life toward God’s kingdom.  He emphasized what he might even have called the countercultural nature of Lent by which Christians learn to resist the pull and lure of consumerism and self-centered living. Read More

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Lent: A Journey of the Heart

A journey of the heart

Henri Nouwen, known for his deep insights into spiritual life, saw Lent as a time for inner transformation—a journey of the heart. He often emphasized the importance of vulnerability, inviting followers of Jesus to step away from the distractions that impede their souls and examine their hearts honestly. Nouwen described Lent as a journey of returning to God, very much in the thread of the story of the prodigal son.

He first saw a reproduction of Rembrandt’s painting entitled, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on a colleague’s office door. It may be impossible to explain the lifelong impact that experience had on Henri’s life. The image stirred something deeply profound in his heart.  Read More

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A Deeper Meaning of Lent

Learning from Phil

Growing up, I didn’t know about Lent from my own experience; I only knew about it from my Catholic friend, Phil.  For a while, we were inseparable, sharing employment with the Chicago Tribune by delivering newspapers in the early morning hours. We went to school together from Ben Franklin Elementary School, Glen Ellyn Junior High, to Glenbard West High School.  Lent for Phil, as I recall, was about giving up something like Snicker bars, or Wrigley chewing gum.  In time, I learned a deeper meaning. 

Lent is the season of 40 days leading to our celebration of Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. The word simply means ”springtime,” but in liturgical circles, it is understood as a time of preparation—almost a desert experience like Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism.

“First popularized in the fourth century, Lent is traditionally associated with penitence, fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. It is a time for ‘giving things up’ balanced by ‘giving to those in need.’”[1]  Some consider it a time of dread and darkness, but it is better understood as a time of prayerful self-reflection.  It is “…a time to stop hanging on to whatever shreds of goodness we perceive in ourselves; a time to ask God to show us what we really look like.”[2] Read More

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Managing or Receiving?

 My favorite Bible character is Mary, the mother of Jesus. Though she has many admirable qualities, the one I find myself drawn to the most is the way this ordinary, Jewish young woman responded to the angel Gabriel’s news that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah. 

She was initially confused and disturbed and asked some good questions about how this was all going to work out for her, which I appreciate. However, without knowing all the answers, she said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” 

It’s worth noting that within just a few days of receiving the news from the angel Gabriel, Mary left to go find her relative and friend, Elizabeth, who was also pregnant. She did not work out her situation alone. She found support and seemed to gain strength for her call. Rather quickly, Scripture reveals (Luke 1:46–55) that she began to earnestly praise God for what he was doing in and through her.  Read More

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A tale of two angels

An angel is a messenger. The wings we ascribe to them are most likely optional accessories, like a sunroof on a car. We can make much of what artists, cartoonists, and novelists have shown about the physical nature of angels, but there are three certainties about them in this tale of two angels:

  • They bring announcements from God. Sometimes, they are words of a personal assignment, such as that to a young Jeremiah to bring truth to his troubled nation or declarations of an impending birth that changes the world for all time.
  • They understand humankind enough to add tender words to the announcement, words of calm, comfort, or tranquility—words like “Fear not.”
  • They bring news, a statement, or notice. Something will happen—be alert, get ready, and prepare to respond.

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