Sermon for Quinquagesima
“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”
The idea of life as a journey is a common yet compelling metaphor. It signifies a sense of purpose and indicates a sense of direction. But not all journeys are the same. The differences lie in the conception of the end which conditions the means. Lent would remind us of the essential character of the Christian journey.
The journey is the pilgrimage of the soul to God and it is a pilgrimage with God. The end is union with God and God makes our way to him with us. We are apt to forget how remarkable this really is. There is our human desiring, on the one hand, our quest for God, the odyssey of the human soul, as it were, but there is, on the other hand, the divine desiring, that is to say, God’s will for us.
The journey is the way of sacrifice, to be sure, but it portends the greater accomplishment, the discovery of our part in the body of Christ. What has to be forsaken is our continual tendency to mistake the part for the whole or to deny everything else except our own self-will. Such are the disorders of sin which result in suffering and death. The journey does not deny the realities of sin and suffering but makes the way of pilgrimage through them. This is the marvel and the wonder of the Christian faith, the marvel and the wonder of redemptive love.
That is why the journey is the way of suffering. Our way to God passes through the ways of our rejection of God. Our way to God is the way of redemptive suffering in which the disorders of our souls – our disordered loves – are set in order. The disciplines of Lent are altogether about this. They don’t involve a flight from the world and the extinguishing of our desires so much as they intend “the setting of love in order”. They embrace the three essential characteristics of the Christian pilgrimage: the way of purgation; the way of illumination; and the way of union.
