Sr. Evanne Hunter, IBVM is a St. Michael’s alumna, a member of St. Michael’s Collegium, and a member of the Leadership Team of the Loretto Sisters in Canada. She has served the IBVM as General Consultor, Regional and Provincial Superior, and liaison with the Loretto/ El Salvador twinned community project, and she established the IBVM UN NGO Office at the United Nations in New York. Currently, Sr. Evanne is on the Boards of the National Catholic Broadcasting Council, the Callan Foundation, and Becoming Neighbours. Her numerous awards include a Degree of Sacred Letters Honoris Causa from Regis College.
Thoughts on Lent 2022
February is on its way out, and what a month it has been in Canada! Quarrels about easing pandemic restrictions, the blockades of the “truckers,” the winter storms and all the hardships that seem to make up daily life for all of us during the reign of COVID.
The beginning of the Lenten season, for me, is intrinsically entwined with St. Oscar Romero because of the times I participated in the annual memorial Mass and stood in the very place the assassin stood as he fired the bullet that killed Romero at the altar as he celebrated Mass on March 24, 1980.
This year, as we enter what Romero called the pilgrimage of Lent, it seems to me that our world is a microcosm of the El Salvador of Romero’s time. Existing societal problems have been thrust to the forefront as they are exacerbated by COVID: inhumane poverty, cruel injustice, repression and violation of human rights, disillusionment with institutions, flaws in our economic and social systems, forced migration as a result of environmental disaster, highlighting of the forgotten and excluded, xenophobic suspicion and intolerance.
These are the very things that Romero called the “structural injustice,” “social sin,” and “institutional violence” responsible for the misery of his people. His recent canonization highlighted his “subversive memory” reminding us that the way things are has to change. He would be asking us whether will we really emerge from this pandemic into a “new normal” characterized by a spirit of solidarity, compassion, mercy and hope.
Ash Wednesday ushers in the season of Lent, what St. Oscar Romero calls the most important season of the year. It is a time for Christians to engage in prayer, austerity, introspection and renewal.
Romero asked: “Where are the roots of this ‘social sin’?” His answer? “In the heart of every human being. Present-day society is a sort of anonymous world in which no one is willing to admit sin, yet everyone is responsible. What is needed is not just an individual conversion, but a communal conversion.” It is a time to face the weaknesses, the emptiness and the failures in our own lives and in our broken world. It is a time for a makeover allowing God to create a new heart and renew a right Spirit within us.
Romero encouraged his people to enter fully into “the pilgrimage of Lent so that the coming of Easter Sunday, the Sunday of the Resurrection, will bring not only the memory of the Risen One of centuries ago but also the true resurrection of all God’s people,” and a renewal of ourselves and our world.
What Romero said of his day is true for our day: “The great need is for Christians who are critical and active, who don’t accept situations without analysing them inwardly and deeply … persons who can say yes to justice and no to injustice and can make use of the precious gifts they have to resist evil wherever they see it. We know that every effort to better a society is an effort that God desires, that God demands and that God blesses.” He says that not to do so is unfair, unjust and un-Christian.
So, Romero urges, “Let us make the pilgrimage of Lent so that the coming of Easter, the Sunday of the Resurrection, will bring not only the memory of the Risen Christ of centuries ago but also the true resurrection of our people” and the transformation of our world.
Recognizing the physical and mental toll that COVID is exacting everywhere and the conflicts and natural disasters that are affecting families and nations, let us affirm our trust that through the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, our God is assuring us that Easter Sunday is a new “spring” that brings life and hope that a better world is possible.
Ref: Homilies for the Sundays of Holy Week: St. Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
The Spirit is that little flicker of fire
Burning at the bottom of the woodpile.
Rubbish is piled on,
Rains douse the flame,
Wind blows the smoke away.
But underneath everything
Still an ember burns unquenchable.
The Spirit sustains the feeble breath of life
In the empire of death.
(adapted from Leonardo Boff)
This year, Ash Wednesday is March 2. Mass at St. Basil’s will take place at 7 p.m. EST and will be live streamed. Read other InsightOut posts.