Lent is a 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday.
March 12, 2025
Finding strength in our mortality
We are now in the season of Lent, a time of reflection on who we are as people in relation to the God who made us and our fellow men with whom we coexist. It should also be a time of reflection on the inevitable path to the exit lounge as life ebbs away.
There are those for whom Lent means nothing. In fact, many do not even believe that there is a God or a supreme intelligence that lies behind the creation of the world and man. Existential and anthropological analyses of human existence are best left to philosophers and those who are particularly interested in what some would describe as these abstract or esoteric indulgences. Some would regard them as mere distractions which detract from the hard facts of life, mere humbugs and irritations that have no bearing on how we should live our lives.
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Yet we cannot escape the obvious debilitation of mind and body as time goes on. The young, especially, with all the various engagements of youth, do not have time to think about mortality. In their notions of invincibility, many fail to recognise that young people are dying at an alarming rate and from diseases that were once considered the province of the old and aged. The indulgence of life-debilitating lifestyles plays their role. So too does the absence of any overarching moral sense of why they are here, and worse, where they are going.
Many young people, faced with the dehumanising prospects of the technologies to which they are addicted, are fast losing good personal relationships with each other. Thus, many are not able to indulge, with love and respect, the warmth, comfort, and dignity of human relationships, without which life becomes devoid of real happiness.
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Part of the rubrics of the Lenten season, and of which we are reminded every Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is that we are but dust and to dust we shall return. This is not an optimistic view of the human condition, neither is Isaiah’s assessment that all flesh is grass which withers and, like the flowers, fades (Isaiah 40:6), nor that of the Psalmist who declares that all life is like grass which grows and flourishes in the morning and by the evening withers and is cut down (Psalm 90: 5,6). So, the psalmist says, the well-thinking person would be well advised to number his days and apply his heart to wisdom (Psalm 90:12).
For me this latter reference from Psalm sums it up quite well. In other words, the wise person would take stock of his/her mortality and become wise as to how he/she lives his/her life. Lent is a mere reminder of this necessary exercise. Some indulge it by “giving up” something for Lent: eat less ice cream to lose weight; drink less alcohol, or give up drinking entirely; no sex for 40 days and 40 nights; try to live more graciously and humbly with their spouse. These are just some of the hosts of resolutions that people make to themselves but often fail to keep. The sad truth about these “disciplines”, especially that of fasting, is that those who indulge them are not disciplined enough to maintain them; thus, a 40-day fast seldomly goes beyond five days. If it does succeed, it does not require one patting oneself on the back if after Lent one returns to the old ways of living with very little having changed.
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It is this hypocrisy which is the bane of human existence. We too often lie to ourselves, which is why it is so difficult to maintain a genuine sense of being with other people. Wisdom demands that we derive strength from our mortality, that we are not here forever, and whatever good we can do to influence the space we occupy for the better we should do while we are able to. We should not look in the mirror every day and say that we are mortal but try to discover how for that day we can be the best that we know we are capable of. That is making your mortality work for us in our essential relationships, be they familial, filial, business, or divine. I hope you can derive strength from knowing that here you have no continuing city, but you look for a city that has foundations and whose maker and builder is God.
A solemn, holy, and spiritually fulfilling Lenten observance to you, dear reader.
Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest, social commentator, and author of the books Finding Peace in the Midst of Life’s Storms; Your Self-esteem Guide to a Better Life and Beyond Petulance: Republican Politics and the Future of America. He hosts a podcast — Mango Tree Dialogues — on his YouTube channel. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or stead6655@aol.com.
