The Church’s lessons for the Lenten season are concerned chiefly with the fundamental elements of moral living: the casting out of sin, and the acquisition of virtue. That is most obvious, of course, in the Scripture readings for the Great Season of Lent. The unifying theme of the Lenten Gospel readings tell us that the casting out of sin is not enough: the empty soul the house swept and garnished the disillusioned soul, unless it be filled with virtue, is vulnerable to still more grievous sin, so that “the last state of that man is worse than the first.” The casting out of sin, and the acquisition of virtue is the point of all the traditional Lenten disciplines of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The purpose is our liberation: that we should, be delivered from servitude to sin, into the spiritual freedom of the children of God. “By the finger of God” our devils are cast out, and God’s Kingdom comes upon us.
The idea of liberation is very popular nowadays, and finds expression in all sorts of liberation movements. In such movements generally, the idea is-that our freedom as individuals, is painfully and unjustly restricted by traditions and social and institutional forms. The idea is that if we could only be freed from all those forms of external oppression, then we could really express our true selves, and fulfill our potential as human beings. Then life would surely be worth living. Such ideas and attitudes have in recent years penetrated very deeply into the whole fabric of our society, and have profoundly affected our family life, our Church life, our political institutions, and soon, for better or worse. At any rate, the Christian religion, especially the message of this Lenten season, calls us to look more deeply at the problem of oppression and liberation. Just what is the nature of our servitude, and what is our way to freedom?
In Christian language, our servitude is sin, and our liberty is the life of virtue. We are promised deliverance “from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” And these are not fundamentally matters of oppression and deliverance by powers outside of ourselves. Sin and virtue are fundamentally matters of the soul. The virtue of the soul is not a matter of free self-expression: it is a matter of humility and obedience. We become good only by doing good, over and over and over, until it becomes the habit, the very pattern of our lives.
So Christian living is all about the casting out of sin, and the acquisition of virtue. Sin is not what we happen to find disagreeable, or inconvenient, or disgusting. Sin is what the Word of God forbids. Virtue is not what we happen to find pleasant, or nice, or pretty. Virtue is what the Word of God demands. Our liberation lies in our humble obedience to that Word.
Now, you might say to me “All that is obvious enough, but easier said than done. In real life, moral problems are not simple, not black and white, but a thousand different shades of gray; and how do I know what the Word of God says about this or that particular situation?” Well, certainly, I dare not pretend that it is easy. I do not find it so, and I don’t suppose that you do, either. But at the same time, we do know something of what the Word of God demands of us. Let’s start with the little bit that we do know, and let’s not make the complexities of our problems an excuse for doing nothing. In the Church’s Lenten message, humility and obedience are the keys to liberation, and that message focuses in the humble obedience of Christ our Savior, “that we should follow the example of his great humility.” In the ancient garden of man’s innocence and folly, the serpent tempted man and woman, saying, “Ye shall be as gods, knowing Good and Evil.” (Genesis 3.5) In vain ambition, forsaking God’s command, we ate of that forbidden tree, asserting the pride that we can do everything on our own. Our Lenten journey is the road between that ancient tree of disobedience, and the tree of Christ’s obedience, on Calvary. That is the price of liberation.
Father Peter Karam