Long

That’s what lent means. Long. The time of lent happens when the hours of sunlight start to lengthen. This happens not because the sun just wants to work longer hours in spring and summer (from March to September), and the evening stars want to go home early. The sun and the stars work their light whether it is night or day to us. Come to think of it, they’ve been shining long before we came to being, and they’ll be shining long after we leave the universe.

The difference in the length of night and day is because of us, the tilt of our earth as we go around the sun. The reason we tilt, why we stand oblique has something to do with our turning (the way a top wobbles when spinning). And the reason we even turn at all, why we can’t seem to keep still has something to do with gravity. Interestingly, the gravity that spins us in orbit is the same thing that keeps us fastened to the ground and keeps us from being thrown off the merry-go-round. But please don’t ask me where gravity comes from. Not even Hawking or Einstein knows. We’re still trying to figure out how gravity unraveled from the other forces after the big bang.

Now, you might say, this is all so very nice. But who cares? Why can’t we put lent during the typhoon season when we all need some whipping from our wobbling? Why not place lent during the cold and depressing season of winter, and Christmas in spring or summer? And while we’re at it, why not rename lent and its 40 days to “quarantine” (which is what quarantine literally means), a time of suspension, separation, discipline, testing and purification?

After all, in the first reading of today, we have a chronicle of Israel’s wobbling, with its princes and priests and people adding “infidelity upon infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the Lord’s temple.” We are told about their defiance of God’s word, their deafness to the prophets, and how “their enemies burnt the house of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem, set all its palaces afire, and destroyed all its precious objects.”

Even their exile to a foreign land was to give rest to a land left desolate by their sinfulness, thus fulfilling the words of the prophet: “Until the land has retrieved its lost sabbaths, during all the time it lies waste it shall have rest while seventy years are fulfilled.”

Indeed, the long in lent can be all about the lengthening of shadows and the lingering of our sorrow.

But as all three readings today remind us, the long in lent is all about the stretch of God’s mercy. Thus the prophet tells us that Israel’s exile ended when the Persians came to power, and a benevolent king named Cyrus brought them back home. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes about how even while we were sinners, God loved us. Even while we were sinners, not after our contrition and resolutions, God forgave us in Christ.

“God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, … brought us to life with Christ, … raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Even to Nicodemus, who comes to Jesus in the dark of night, Jesus proclaims, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

Even in exile, even while we were sinners, even in the dark, God does not give up on us. And the way God saves us is through Christ who is thrust into that very darkness. Even in the depths of alienation, with Christ descending “to the dead,” he draws us out from darkness to light, from betrayal to love, from death to life.

The long in lent is not all about shadows and the length of our sentence or condemnation. The long in lent is about the stretch of God’s patience and love. When love stretches, hope (like daylight) lengthens.

Come to think of it, the gravity that keeps us wobbling is the same gravity that fastens us to this valley of tears. It is also the same gravity that fastens God to us as well. Here in this vale of tears, for all the turning and twisting of our lives, by that very fastening of Christ to our cross are we redeemed.

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Fr. Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ is President of the Ateneo de Manila University. For feedback on this column, email [email protected]