That I May Receive my Sight

By ancient custom, the sacred images of the church are veiled in penitential array of unbleached linen during the season of Lent. Thanks to memorial donations, we have been able to replace our old and shabby Lenten array, and on Ash Wednesday you will see that it veils all the sacred images, including those of entire reredos, which heretofore had been veiled only in part.

 The veiling of the sacred images in Lenten array confirms the meaning of Lent declared to us in the ancient lessons for this Sunday before Lent (1 Corinthians 13; Luke 18:31-end). As these veils indicate, Lent is a journey from blindness to vision. Jesus tells his disciples, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”, to be witnesses there of his death and resurrection. Jesus spoke plainly, but the disciples were nonetheless perplexed: “they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken” (Luke 18:34). In the categories of worldly wisdom they cannot comprehend that the Messiah should enter his kingdom by suffering rejection and shameful death.

But there is hope for their spiritual blindness. For right after this passage, St Luke tells of the miraculous healing of the blind man. Trusting in the mercy of Messiah, he asked “that I may receive my sight”; and when Christ granted his prayer, “immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God” – followed him, that is, as a disciple, and on the way that leads up to Jerusalem, where he will see the consummation of the divine purpose in the death of the Messiah.

Transactional, self-seeking worldly wisdom is not able to comprehend the charity of God towards miserable sinners, the charity that is revealed in the cross of Jesus, “love for the loveless shown, that they might lovely be”. The cross is a hidden victory, the means of glory and life eternal; but this hidden victory is veiled to the world, for which it is the sign of shame and death, the emblem of “losers”. Thus in the Lenten veiling of the sacred images, we are reminded that the life of a Christian is a journey from worldly blindness to the vision of God. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”. (1 Corinthians 13:12). This journey, as the epistle indicates, is one that begins in faith, advances in hope, and is perfected in charity. In the practical disciplines of Lent, we learn first to deny ourselves, by fasting and abstinence, that we may feed in faith upon the word of God; in prayer we learn to place our entire hope and expectation in patient waiting for the fufilment of God’s gracious promises; and in the giving of alms for the relief of spiritual and physical need, we conform our wills to his self-giving love, in the non-transactional charity that “seeketh not her own”. In faith and hope and charity, thus strengthened by exercise, we recognize and rejoice in the full realization of God’s loving purpose in the passion and death of Christ, the hidden victory won for us on the cross, but “unveiled” to the eyes of the faithful in his resurrection.

As those baptized and confessing faith in Christ, we are disciples, called out of the world, to follow him in faith, on a journey up to Jerusalem; but it is often the case that we find ourselves like those first disciples, who understood none, or very little, of what Christ says to us so plainly in his word. But in the accomplishment of his mission to suffer and die and rise, the hold of the old worldly outlook on their minds was shattered, and (as the resurrection narratives record, especially Luke 24) perplexity gave way to understanding. But note, this only happened to the disciples: to those who in fact had committed to following him in faith, even when they did not fully understand what his teaching meant and would involve, to those who placed themselves at his service. To those who by their own choice had kept their distance from him, his death and resurrection remained an enigma they could not grasp. Our Lenten observance is an opportunity for us to live the life of disciples, not just in the abstraction of some vague and carefully compartmentalized “spirituality” but in a wholehearted obedience that shapes what we do with our time, our minds, our bodies, and our money. So the promise of spiritual vision entails a commitment to wholehearted discipleship this Lent – and we have been called to it. “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem”. – GGD

For Lenten Discipline:

VOUCHSAFE us, O Lord, the help of thy grace; that being intent, as becomes us, on fasting, prayer, and the giving of alms, we may be delivered from our bodily and spiritual enemies; through Christ our Lord. Amen.