Lent Is For Falling In Love
EMILY MESSITER
Hello, friend. Lent is in full swing. The lengthy month of March - perhaps still cloaked in winter - might be stirring within you a sense of anxious gloom regarding those Lenten promises you made. Six weeks is a long time, and with life’s demands, taking on additional sacrifices can sometimes feel burdensome, if not nearly impossible.
I want to submit something to you that has been on my heart recently. My prayer is that the Father will use it to bless your Lenten pilgrimage and to wrap it in His tenderness. Here it is: Lent is for falling in love.
I know, I know. I’m right there with you - if I look at the sum total of the 26 Lents I have lived, romantic is NOT the first word that comes to mind. I imagine seeing my reflection on my phone screen, frustrated that I’m wasting time again when I promised I wouldn’t. Or those internal conversations that try to justify the piece of chocolate that feels like an absolute need after a long day. Or all the emotions raging within me when I just don’t want to pray but I should want to pray, and I know I need to pray, but why is it sometimes so hard to pray? It’s almost as if I see Jesus at the finish line of Lent, way across the desert, hanging out in the Resurrection glory, and if I just trudge through these 40 days, I’ll prove myself good enough to be with Him.
It has only been in the past couple of years that my broken understanding of Lent has been challenged, and I want to invite you, friend, to consider this possibility as well. What if this were the Lent that you fell in love? St. Augustine described the Cross as the marriage bed that Jesus mounts to be united with his Bride, the Church. Lent is a pilgrimage to a wedding, and you, my friend, are invited to be the bride. And so I ask you again, What if this were the Lent that you fell in love? What if our Lenten observances didn’t lead us into excessive self-watching or condemnation, but actually opened up the deep longing in our hearts to be known and loved by the Bridegroom?
If I’m honest, I have to admit that I’m often scared of that deep longing within me. Maybe you are too. Why else would we spend hours scrolling on our phones, or gossip to feel included and relevant, or complain out of the fear of suffering alone? Perhaps I don’t love Jesus with everything that I am because I don’t know Him. I don’t know Him to be the One who satisfies.
On the 3rd Sunday of Lent, the Church gives us a companion in the Woman at the Well (John 4). She, too, experiences a deep longing in her heart to be known and loved. When Jesus meets her and tells her all that she ever did, His purposes aren’t to humiliate, expose, shame, or condemn, but to reveal that she has no reason to fear the deep desires of her heart. “When He sees our sin, He sees our pain,” Julian of Norwich said, and surely, Jesus gazed with such compassion on this woman who never knew herself to be truly loved. Someone recently pointed out to me that if this woman has had five husbands, and is now with another man who is not her husband, Jesus is the seventh man. Seven - the number of perfection, of completion, of covenant. He wins her over with His absolute kindness; His desire for her meets her own heart’s thirst for the only love that could satisfy. He will be her Bridegroom.
When these forty days draw to a close, and the preparations are complete, and the Bridegroom mounts the Cross, where will you be? The great hope of Lent is that we are offered a new story. If, while looking with gentleness on our own stories, we find that we struggle to trust Him with the aches in our hearts, or that we are so accustomed to making the annual trudge across the Lenten desert on our own impressive (but oh, how lonely) terms, or that the thought of falling in love in an absolute way with God sometimes fills us with a sense of terror at its possible ramifications in our lives, we can behold His infinite patience: nailed to the Cross, the Bridegroom waits for his Bride. And as we courageously reveal these places of our hearts to Him, as we hear Him inviting us to fall in love and to meet Him at Calvary, we find that we are not alone. Our Mother goes before us; she stands there pleading for me and for you like she did centuries ago: “They have no wine.” There’s no need to fear the places of my heart that aren’t in love with Him yet, or to hide them away in shame or to engage them in a harsh self-improvement project this Lent. In a special way, Mary sees our poverty of love, and prays for us unceasingly that, in those places of our hearts that have run out of wine, they may know the intimacy of love with her Son.
And so, my friend, what if this were the Lent that you fell in love? What if we receive the gentle gaze of Jesus, our seventh man, and are patient with our aching hearts this Lent? What if, whenever we find that we’re relying on our online presence to make us loveable, or on lunchtime conversations to give us the security of relationship, or on our wardrobes to establish the uniqueness of our identities, we take a moment to feel the ache within us, take a deep breath, loosen our grip on control, and pray, “Jesus, help me to fall more deeply in love with you.” What if the ways that we commit to Lenten observances - maybe fasting from our phones for an hour before we go to bed, or spending five minutes of prayer in silence and solitude at the start of our lunch breaks, or donating an item from our wardrobe each day or week - were not to prove anything to Jesus, but to let go of the tendency to provide for our own needs and desires and to give the Bridegroom a chance to satisfy our hearts? Lent is for falling in love, after all. And when we ask Him to help us fall more in love, He’ll always respond. How can we be sure? Because, dear friend, it’s His desire first. On the marriage bed of the Cross, He cried out for all to hear that He thirsts for you. The ache of your heart is safe with Him who aches for you even more. So do not be afraid to fall in love this Lent. He invites you to the greatest of weddings, to the most divine romance; may the Bride’s heart leap at His call and be made ready.
