Don’t Lose Lent’s Gifts

Today’s reflection was submitted by Concordia’s Director of Chaplaincy, Rev. Robert Zagore. Through the dedicated ministry of our Chaplaincy Department, spiritual care remains an essential part of our residents’ well-being, especially during the Lenten season. Enjoy!

Lent is often treated as a church season we observe rather than a road we walk. Forty days of purple, a few extra services and the familiar talk of giving something up. Lent becomes associated with willpower – coffee abandoned, chocolate resisted – small acts of self-denial that are usually well-intentioned and quietly forgotten. But in the Christian tradition, Lent is not decorative or optional, and it is certainly not about proving our seriousness. It exists because human beings forget who they are and whose they are. Lent is given to us as a necessary interruption, a season that pulls us out of spiritual autopilot and returns us to the truth about God, about ourselves and about the world we inhabit.

That interruption begins sharply on Ash Wednesday. The ashes are meant to disturb us. They are made from the burned palms of the previous Palm Sunday – last year’s praise reduced to dust – and pressed onto our foreheads with words we do not naturally choose for ourselves: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. This is not morbid honesty. It is clarity. For nearly four decades, I have spoken these words to thousands: at deathbeds, in hospital rooms, in church services, and, during COVID, through car windows in parking lots. In a culture that numbs itself to death and hides aging behind distraction, Ash Wednesday insists that we face reality with calm faith. For those whose bodies are failing, whose independence has narrowed or whose days are measured in medications and appointments, this truth is not cruel. It is merciful. Only the truth makes grace possible.

The 40 days of Lent are not arbitrary. Scripture uses 40 as the measure of testing and formation: Israel in the wilderness, Moses on Sinai, Elijah’s fear-filled road to Mt. Carmel, Christ’s fasting in the desert. Forty days is long enough to have truth exposed and short enough to awaken us, not defeat us. The purple paraments in the church speak the same language – repentance without despair, restraint without hopelessness. Lent slows us down, because human beings are not healed by speed. At least, not for long.

 We are healed by being tested, absolved, loved.

In this sense, Lent is not about denying the self for its own sake; it is about scraping away the accretions that cling to us – false comforts, numbing habits, distorted loves – so that what is true may rise again. Lent removes what harms – not to make us smaller, but to make room for what is true.

As Lent moves toward Maundy Thursday, remembrance takes on its proper depth. When Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me,” He is not asking for nostalgia or symbolic recall. The word anamnesis (translated “remembrance”) carries a stronger meaning: remember again who you are and who Christ is. He draws us back into Him by this act. Remembrance is not passive. It is communion. Christ does not merely call our minds to the past; He gives Himself in the present.

Christian identity is not sustained by recall, but by reception.

Gethsemane and Good Friday refuse our softer explanations. In the garden, Jesus prays that the cup might pass, and it does not. That matters. The prayer is faithful, and the answer is still no. It tells us that salvation is not one option among many. There is only one way, and it runs through rejection, suffering and death. Lent does not teach that suffering is assigned by God as a test. It teaches that God does not abandon us to it. On the cross, we do not see a God who merely understands suffering. We see the only One who could bear the sin of all people, of all times, doing what no one else could do.

Lent endures because it meets enduring human needs.

We need honesty about our limits, we need worshipful rhythms that disrupt denial and a reality bigger than our guilt, grief and mortality. This is true not only for those who suffer, but for those who serve: who stand at bedsides, keep watch through long nights and carry the quiet weight of others’ decline. Lent names that as holy work. If you are tired, Lent is not asking more of you. Your life is doing the work Lent was designed for. Hold on to Jesus. Especially as life exposes our fragility, Lent teaches us how to live truthfully without despair. It does not end in ashes. It ends at an empty tomb. And those who walk this road discover again that remembering who we are always begins and ends with remembering who Christ is.

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Founded in 1881, Concordia Lutheran Ministries is a faith-based, CARF-accredited Aging Services Network and recipient of the inaugural Pennsylvania Department of Aging Excellence in Quality Care Award. As one of the largest nonprofit senior care providers in the country, the organization serves 50,000 people annually through in-home care and inpatient locations. Concordia offers a lifetime continuum of care that includes adult day services, home health care, hospice, physician and rehabilitation services, memory care, personal care, assisted living, respite care, retirement living, skilled nursing/short-term rehab, spiritual care and medical equipment.