[Oe List ...] Wednesday OpEd Saipan Tribune

[Jaime R Vergara]

Ash Wednesday
 
>From the moveable feast of Fat Tuesday’s Mardi Gras, we move to the solemnity of the moveable fast!  This move is like the career path of some of us who took seriously the Vatican II’s reforming, if not revolutionary, call.  At Seminaries and Theological Schools, fans and fanatics cultivated being a prophet as major, pastor as minor, priest as elective, but ignored the monastic role as archaic and escapist, though a prerequisite of the profession.  Lent as the 40-day liturgical exercise in detachment was observed more in endurance rather than as a profound religious observation.
 
For us, it would take total immersion in the non-religious secular world to lead us to a fuller appreciation of the gifts of the season’s dramaturgical wisdom.
 
We lift four features in our memory; others would point to other emphases.  There is the 40-cycle pattern, the basic substance of dust and ashes, the role of being marked, and finally, the discipline of the fast.
 
The 40-day/year-cycle in ancient times was a universal time pattern of wholeness and completion brought about by the solar ‘month’ of forty days that in a nine revolution of the sun would bring it back to the ‘same’ location.  
 
The Jews narrate their exodus from Egypt to Canaan as taking a generation of 40 years; Moses took 40 days to bring YHWH’s commandments to the Chosen People.  The followers of Jesus, a later prophetic voice, used the 40-day imagery as the time it took for the carpenter of Nazareth to appropriate his chosen role to assault the Jewish illusions of a saving Messiah from the House of David and the Roman delusions of the invincibility of its Empire.   The march against the Temple and the Legation of Jerusalem cost him dearly.
 
The astrologically determined time cycles of our familiarity like the 7-day week from the lunar calendar and the 24-hour rotation of the Earth on its axis are patterns we take for granted.  These are inventions meant to give rationality to humankind’s journey and existence.  The season of Lent is an invitation to look into the patterns and nature of our human journey.
 
That internal meditation of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish Passover and Christian Lent, as well as the Islamic Imams in their Ramadan used the imagery of  “dust and ashes”, from whence everyone came to where all are headed, as the overarching theme of the observances.  It is in this commonality of fate and destiny that the call to turn away from original “sin” is made.  
 
Original sin is not meant as a negative measure at the starting gate of life.  It refers to the desert dwellers’ propensity to live their situations more along common mirages than existing in the reality of the way-life-is (YHWH).  Illusory existence is the ultimate escape, from famine to fame, from loneliness to romance, from ordinariness to elevated status.  The season of Lent admonishes the faithful to turn their essence away from such illusions, and return (repent) to the basic requirements of existence, of dust and ashes!
 
I have a big birthmark on my tummy.  As a wayward kid, my Mama always alerted the police of a “marked” missing boy should I be found.
 
Being marked like the cross on the forehead evolved later into the act of choosing one’s vocation.  My friends followed the professional steps of Papa or the career path of Mama, but I went through Lent with the challenge to discover what I was “marked” for, what my chosen-ness was, and create my vocational path accordingly.  Forty days of reflection invites the faithful to chart the course of their existence, not in the determinism of one’s parentage, but on the freedom of one’s choice.
 
Being marked leads to the monastic practices of fasting, the discarding of illusions and delusions.  These often come to us as a big surprise.  
 
Forty years ago, Richard Nixon came to China, shattering my set of images.  Old Dick was a political enemy and we rationalized his decision to bridge the 25-yr long distance that separated the children of Mao from the beneficiaries of FDR’s acumen with the cynical comment that he was playing to the home crowd who opposed the Vietnam War to be reelected for a second term.  He was reelected, though it now appears from WH records that the move on the PRC was conceived early on in the Nixon presidency.
 
The bashing of McGovern as the Peace candidate was almost total (only 1 State and the District of Columbia went Blue) but the young campaign coordinator in Dallas from Arkansas while I was at SMU evolved with the determination and discipline of a monk to find himself and his Hillary in the William Jefferson Clinton White House of the 90s.
 
OK, some will complain that the monastic vows do not exactly fit tricky Dick and cigar chomping Bill to a tee.  The traditional vows are of poverty, chastity, and obedience (sodality).  Removing the moralistic screen later imposed on these vows, poverty is simply abject ‘detachment’ from the allure of wealth, chastity is ‘single-mindedness’ to pursue one’s vocation, and obedience is ‘total engagement’ in the missional task at hand.  
 
In our old age, we rediscovered our monastic calling again.  Welcome to Ash Wednesday.



 Jaime R Vergara 


All of yesterday, thanks; all of tomorrow, yes; all of today, let it be!



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120221/7aef7a42/attachment-0001.html>