The Great Pivot of Lent

When we learn to perceive anew, then we do anew -- and we don't, too.

One of the hardest things to do well is to pivot, even if you’re practiced at it. There are small pivots and big pivots, and they are not the same. The small pivots are easy: change of tactics while you move in the same direction toward the same goal. The large pivots: not so much. These can entail a change of strategy or even of direction, as one recognizes that changes long desired cannot come about without a change of direction.

This is one of the things Lent is about. We all have deeply engrained patterns of perception and of behavior. Some of these patterns — most, if we’ve worked hard at it and are lucky — serve us well. Others wreak havoc, and one of the ways they do is by insinuating always that they cannot be broken.

Thing is, while we live there is no expiration date on the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that moved across the waters at the beginning of time and then parted the Red Sea at the Exodus is moving across the face of the earth even now, looking for men and women who will forsake those patterns that serve us poorly and distract us from life’s true goal: mystical union with God, even here on earth, and life with God forever in heaven hereafter.

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” These words from the prophet Zechariah ring throughout all time until time’s end. Our Lenten exercises, our mortifications, our customary plan of life: all good. But the big stuff, the intractable sin, the habits that we cannot break (or cannot want to break): this requires divine intervention.

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.” These words spoken by God through the prophet Isaiah still ring in our ears as full of promise. It’s important to note, though, that as the chapter unfolds, we see that the hearers did not accept the prophecy and tried to resolve their problems on their own, and they heap upon themselves trouble after trouble until the Lord Himself intervenes.

This is no call to quietism and passivity. We’re not supposed to throw in our cards and throw up our hands as we wait for the divine assistance. No, this returning and rest means that we continue to do the things we are supposed to do: the farmer continues to sow and then support the crop; the shepherd takes care of the flock come what may; we persist as best we can in the good practices and habits we have established in our souls. Petulance — especially the unvoiced and unrepeated kind — is the worst possible response. The second worst is the question “now what do I do?” The next best response is “Lord, now what are we going to do?” The best possible response is, “Lord, I trust that you know what you are about and because I do, I will go about what’s mine as best I can and deal with this obstacle as best I can, until your promised relief arises.” Each of those responses is a pivot.

But this isn’t “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s just not a phrase you will find in the Bible or in the Church’s Sacred Tradition. It just isn’t there. The phrase originates in Ancient Greece, as it happens, long before the Gospel hit those sun-dappled shores.

This is surely a curiosity for us, because “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” as Tom Cruise tells us through Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai. Nor do I mean to suggest that Algren is wrong and we are supposed to wait on our haunches for deliverance to come. The task before us is rather to identify what it is we are, and, more importantly, perhaps, are not meant to do. It isn’t enough to do the wrong thing well. Nor is it enough to do the right thing poorly. Our troubles arise when we try to play God, or when we try to force God’s hand so as to accelerate the deliverance we want to receive from him, and even, perhaps, think we have a right to expect from Him. “Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” But that means the help comes on His terms, not ours.

Holy Week shows us what the terms are. The pivot is found in self-abasement, the kind the world — the world in you and me — thinks is ridiculous. Have a look at Philippians 2 and meditate on how the Second Person of the Trinity condescends to the human condition and then takes the form of the lowest of the low of us. Then ask yourself, as I must ask myself, in those areas where we still have trouble and need, have we really lowered ourselves, surrendered our natural prerogatives, as much as we tell ourselves we have? Honesty and courage will bring us to say, “Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.” Then the Lord will act, in his own way and time, to bring the relief and salvation we need. But the relief begins in the act of self-abasement.